


Extraordinary Measures

by jmflowers



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Memory Alteration, POV First Person, Science Fiction, reposting a previously written story from fanfiction.net, written circa 2011-2013 approximately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:13:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 33,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21672751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmflowers/pseuds/jmflowers
Summary: "What am I supposed to do with it? There's all this love left over. What am I supposed to do with it when you're not here to feel it?"In the aftermath of a loss, Callie makes a decision that changes the course of her life with Arizona.
Relationships: Arizona Robbins/Calliope "Callie" Torres
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	1. Manet alta mente repostum

**Author's Note:**

> I began writing this story back in 2011 and shared it on Fanfiction.net between October 27th, 2012 and October 27th, 2013 - my 20th and 21st birthdays. I've grown a lot as a writer since then, but nearly 70,000 views tells me that it made an impact on more than just my life. I'm reposting it here, on AO3, to ensure the safety of several years of ~extremely emotional~ hard work.

**Manet alta mente repostum**

_"It remains stored deep in the mind"_

It's the clanging of dirty pots that pulls me - no, drags me - into consciousness. "Callie," floats the singsong accompaniment, easily drifting across the apartment from the conductor of this chaos. "Come on, Calliope," she tries again, the sound of last night's dinner dishes dissipating as she travels the short distance towards our bedroom.

I pull a pillow over my head.

"You have to get up," she scolds from the doorway, a gentle giggle escaping her lips when I groan in defiance. I toss the pillow over to her side of the bed, leveling her with a gaze that begs her to come closer, but she knows my tricks. "You need to get up," she repeats, the dimples in her cheeks betraying her attempt at a serious tone, "You have to go to work and I promised Teddy that I'd have lunch with her."

"Have lunch with me," I offer, earning another giggle.

She inches forward, settling herself gently on the edge of the bed, leaning slightly against my hip. "With you," she teases, "It's breakfast."

"We have time," I whisper, sitting up so I can wrap a hand around the nape of her neck. I rub my fingers against the spattering of soft hair falling loose from her messy ponytail.

"No," she protests even as she leans into me, shivering slightly, "We do not - _you_ do not."

"Don't tell me how much time I do or do not have," I bite back playfully, the fingers of my other hand slowly tracings patterns along the inside of her thigh. I pull her closer, nipping at her ear. "When do you have to meet Teddy?"

She swallows roughly. "Um, one."

"Mmm," I murmur, trailing my lips down her exposed neck. _Cervical vertebrae_ , I acknowledge subconsciously.

"Cal-"

My hand slides up between her legs, pressing into her heat as my mouth makes quick work of her pulse point. Her protests cease.

"I think you should do something for me."

She throws her head back, barely listening as I turn my attention to her collar bone. _Clavicle_. "What?"

"Strip for me," I whisper into the valley of her shoulder: _supraclavicular_. Goosebumps splay across her skin, dipping beneath the neckline of her shirt.

She lowers her gaze, blue eyes dark with lust. "Oh, I should?"

"It'd give us a lot more time," I point out, slowly running my tongue along my bottom lips.

She casts me a glare before pulling her shirt over her head, jeans and underwear soon adding to the pile on the floor. My muscles clench at the sight of her pale skin, a freckled expanse that is all _mine_. She tugs my shirt over my head, fingertips grazing my tightened abdomen, the only article of clothing I managed to grab before collapsing into bed last night.

I kick away the sheets and guide her down on top of me, my leg bending upwards between hers. The instinctive grinding of her hips coats my skin with her wetness, eliciting a moan.

"You're going to be very late," she mumbles against my mouth.

"I'll claim personal emergency." My tongue glides over her lips before journeying inside; nails raking across her back, over her ass. She shudders beneath my touch. "Do you want me to stop?" I ask in a moment of breath, eyes fluttering open to study her features.

"Don't you dare."

I slide my fingers into her, watching blue eyes reappear as she gasps, "Eager?"

I kiss her again. "I said it was an emergency."

#

I waltz through the halls of the hospital, all heady with the scent of antiseptic. My sneaker-clad heels click gently on the white linoleum, my lab coat billowing in the breeze resulted from opening double doors. This is my kingdom; I am queen here.

Which is what, ultimately, finds me in an 8-hour surgery just twenty (okay, forty) minutes into my afternoon shift. By the time I scrub out, I'm exhausted. My waltz turns into a meander up to a fourth floor on-call room, where I lock the door so I won't be disturbed, and collapse onto the however uncomfortable mattress. I remind myself that there's only one hour left and I can make it: I can survive one hour if at the end of it I get to go home and crawl into bed with my _wife_.

"Callie!" tugs me awake - again. And banging. "Callie!" Heavy knocking on the on-call room door. "Callie, open up!" Mark.

I throw open the door, feeling my world go a little awry, the floor shifting slightly beneath my feet. Mark's face is pale, preventing me from demanding an apology or spouting off my heavy ego. His mouth is drawn into a tight line that begs me to follow him, full speed, down the hallway. I run hot on his heels, the thumping of our feet the only thing that holds me to reality.

And straight to the emergency room.

The first thing I see is Alex, heaving into a garbage can, the sound of his lunch hitting the bottom and echoing in the bin. I see Kepner, tears welling in her eyes, hands incessantly shaking as she clutches a portable ultrasound. The gurney is the last to cross my field of vision, barreling back into the hallway from trauma room one, Meredith's voice yelling stats to the team that surrounds it.

"Car crash," whispers some nurse behind me.

"B.P. is dropping!"

"Book O.R. 2," yells someone else.

"Page Shepherd."

Everyone around me seems to be moving all at once.

The doors to the elevator open, preparing to swallow them whole, and it's just that slight shift of doctors that affords me a glance. Of blonde hair, streaked with blood; of bright blue eyes, somehow still open; of scrapes and bruises and IVs.

Of my wife, bleeding out.

The doors close behind them, the E.R. instantly, achingly, silent. It feels thick, toxic on my chest. I can't breathe.

Teddy appears before me like a mirage, wavering in front of my suddenly tear-filled eyes. "I'm so sorry," she manages between sobs, "I'm so sorry, Callie. The car just came out of nowhere."

She's bleeding, too, I realize, a thick, dark trail marring the side of her cheek. The right side, beneath a piece of glass stuck into her skin. I swallow roughly, trying to keep my emotions under control. "You need to get checked out," I choke, my throat already raw from tears I've yet to cry.

"I'm so sorry," she says again.

"It's okay, Arizona is going to be okay."

#

"Welcome back, Dr. Torres," comes Nurse Denia's light soprano, pushing its way into my foggy brain, "You'll probably feel bleary for a few more minutes, but everything went smoothly, you had a wonderful session. I'm going to administer a shot of antidepressant to help keep the chemicals in your brain relatively balanced, is that alright?"

"Yes," I mumble, my lips cracking with the effort. I taste blood.

"I'll just give you a few more minutes to wake up, then you're free to go and I'll see you again in a week." I can't help but wonder if nurses always sound so annoyingly chipper to patients waking up from anaesthesia.

"How'd it go?" asks a thick tenor from the far corner of the room, shuffling feet bringing the voice closer.

"No thrashing this time."

"I didn't reach the end," I cough out, interrupting now that I'm getting more aware of my surroundings. Denia presses a straw against my lips: a glass of water.

The area around me eases into focus, dark curtains sectioning it off from the rest of the room. I can see the edges of a silver tray in my peripheral, needles now empty and waiting for their relocation in the trash. The plastic coating on the chair begins pressing at my skin, reminding me of hours spent in a dentist's chair as a child.

"You're the only one left, now, Callie," says the other voice, the man in front of me a stark contrast to the commanding tone he carries. He seems to wilt where his words stay strong, only faltering in the gentle wheeze of lungs that have been pushed to their limits.

"You can raise the price," I offer dumbly.  
"Money does nothing for me, now."

"It could get rid of the cancer."

He shakes his head, turning to retreat back behind the curtains. "Someday," he calls over his shoulder, "You're going to have to let her go."

I look to Denia, who's busied herself cleaning the tray, head ducked. "Why can't you take over?" I whisper.

She shrugs. "It's not my machine."

#

The road back home is long and far too certain for the entirety of my attention, my thoughts instead racing circles around my brain. A wave of dizziness washes over me, reminding me I haven't eaten today, before tossing my stomach into my throat. I fight the urge to hurl out the car window, to scream at every red light that slows me down.

I make it up to the fifth floor of my building without spilling my guts, relieved that I've yet to see another person - until the door behind me opens and Mark steps forward to take the keys from my shaking fingers. "Callie," he sighs, reaching out to rub my arm.

I shrug away from him, his fingers just grazing my newly tender forearms. I wince when he hits a bruise, making him sigh again. Louder.

He opens my apartment door, following me inside. The blinds are drawn, casting the room into mid-afternoon darkness, the only glow from the television playing an endless loop of cooking shows. Weeks ago, he would've opened a window or picked up forgotten pizza boxes off the floor, but today he just watches me. "Callie," he repeats. "You can't keep doing this."

"Doing what?" I ask, dropping my purse on the floor beside the counter. I throw open the fridge, but there's no food in there: I haven't been grocery shopping.

"It's been three months, Cal."

My body protests the mention of time and I heave, throwing open the lid of the garbage can just in time to catch the contents of my stomach. It tumbles over week old Chinese takeout containers, the smell of old chop suey making me gag again.

It's been _three months_.

"You need to stop, Callie," he says as my stomach settles. I drop the lid, banging metal trapping the putrid scent and ending his argument.

I turn away from him, heading back towards my bedroom. _Our_ bedroom. He doesn't follow. Instead, I hear the apartment door open and then the hollow click of the latch. I collapse into the covers, shaking with sobs.

It's been _three months_ and no one understands.

#

_"Calliope," Arizona whispers, reaching forward to wipe the tears from my cheeks. They're quickly replaced, a salty mixture of rain and my pain. She smiles softly._

_I close the distance between us, pressing my lips hungrily against her own, quickly being granted access to her mouth when I ask. I run my tongue along the insides of her teeth, drinking back the taste of her. "I miss you so much," I mumble into her, more tears tumbling forth._

_"I'm so sorry, Calliope," she swears, kissing away the trails on my face, "I didn't mean to go. I didn't mean to leave you."_

_I nod; I know._

_"What am I supposed to do with it, Arizona?" I ask softly, "There's all this love left over. What am I supposed to do with it when you're not here to feel it?"_

_She tucks me in against her chest, my ear right above where the sound of a beating heart should be. "I feel it," she promises, "No matter where I am, I feel it."_


	2. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit

**Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit**

_"Perhaps someday it will help to have remembered even these things"_

"It was raining," Teddy offers, albeit uselessly, throwing back another shot of liquid confidence. Her face contorts with the burn of tequila, but she makes no effort to reach for a lime; we're drinking hard and fast, trying to find the softer edges of our grieving. "Friday night."

Exactly three months ago.

I run a hand angrily across my eyes, tipping a shot of my own into my mouth, though it does nothing to ward off the tears or the nausea pressing at the forefront of my skull. She continues.

"It was so dark."

My mind races back to that night: the sheen of water across the pavement, how it glowed beneath the streetlights. How hard it must've been to see.

"We were joking around, telling stories, laughing. We were laughing."

_"With you, it's breakfast_. _"_

"We'd had such a good day..." She trails off, watching Joe serving more drinks at the other end of the bar. She squishes a napkin in her fingertips, working out the stiffness of the tears it has already caught. "We had the right of way," she swears, "It was a green light."

I hear the crunch of metal in my head, the push of an engine revving long after it should've stopped. I feel the digging of a seatbelt against my shoulders - _clavicle_ \- where I'd kissed her just that morning. I smell the copper tinge of blood, hear the shattering of glass.

"And then there was screaming."

I push off the bar stool, away from Teddy, away from yet another painful reliving of that night. I already know about the day they spent together: lunch, a movie, a carefree drive. I saw the blood that coated their skin, read the reports on the accident. I know the alcohol levels of the other driver, know that he walked away unscathed.

I wander to the place where we first met, dimly lit and grimy like it's always been. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror: the sunken hollows of my eyes; the chapped texture of my lips; the blotchy paleness of my skin. I lean over the sink, gagging, but nothing comes and that just seems to make everything worse.

I collapse to the floor, sobbing, burying my face in the halo of my arms, praying that when the door opens it'll be her again. _"I think you'll know."_ Instead it's Teddy, kneeling at my feet, stroking at my hair, whispering more apologies.

"I'm so sorry, Callie."

Sorry doesn't bring her back to life.

#

"Dr. Torres," Denia greets, opening the door to let me. She falls silent as we climb the stairs to the room where he keeps the machine. I count twenty-four steps, as I always do: the number of days she'd been gone the first time I came to see him. It's been four times that long, now.

The machine is tucked away behind the curtains, hidden from the world as it has been for years. He sits in a chair by the window, looking out over the deserted warehouse district streets, a blanket wrapped taut around his frail figure.

"Good morning, Callie," he manages, shaking with the effort. He shudders with a cough that makes Denia flinch before she rushes to his side. The wheeze has gotten thicker.

"Not much longer," I whisper, watching the tears well in Denia's eyes.

He nods. "Get Dr. Torres ready for her session," he tells the nurse tucking the blanket tighter around his frail body, "She's going to have to say goodbye soon, too."

Green eyes flick between the two of us before she reluctantly rises, crossing the room to open the curtains. I settle into the plastic covered chair, moving with it when the motors begin forcing it backwards. Denia's experienced hands attach monitors to my head and heart, the beeping that comes along with them all too familiar.

"Are you ready?" she asks softly.

I nod. I'm always ready.

The first pinch is the anaesthetic plunging into my left arm, the second a concoction formed years ago by his brilliant mind. The machine whirs to life around me, dragging me down into the recesses of my mind, back to the only reality I've ever wanted to live: Arizona.

_"Calliope,"_ she whispers into my ear, lips wrapping themselves around the lobe, _"Wake up."_

This is where I'm supposed to be.

#

Alex heaves into the garbage can, Kepner's eyes well with tears, Meredith shouts stats as the team of doctors moves towards the elevator.

"I'm so sorry," Teddy cries.

I run towards the stairwell, feet barely touching the ground, the distance between myself and the surgical floor getting smaller with each passing second. _OR 2, OR 2._ I fly through the door of the operating room, clutching a mask to my face, wrenching sobs tearing their way out of my chest when Arizona's eyes easily find mine.

"Calliope," she smiles softly, "Don't cry."

I march up to her, ignoring protests, to press my lips gently against her own. "I love you," I promise, "I will always love you."

Her eyes hood, dimples appearing in her cheeks. "I'm going to be fine, Calliope," she whispers, "It doesn't even hurt."

#

The gallery chair digs against my skin, my body somehow curled entirely into it. Mark sits beside me, both of us intently watching the surgery below.

"Start with the brain bleed," Shepherd had said, making the first incision along her scalp.

Bailey's turn begins as he is closing, a ten blade pressing along the freckled expanse of Arizona's abdomen. _A freckled expanse that is all mine_. Within seconds, blood is pouring out.

"Find the bleeds!" Bailey shouts, instructing Avery's hands into the open cavity of Arizona's chest. But the blood keeps coming, dark red and haunting.

My eyes settle onto the monitors, her pressure dropping.

"Dr. Bailey," Owen asks, "Can you find the bleed?"

"Her liver is ruptured," she answers, taking gauze from nurses' hands in an effort to stave off the flow. There's blood in the peritoneum.

"She's bottoming out."

The beeping of the machines settle into a solid screech, a screaming in my head. I'm on my feet, hands pressed against the glass, another scream clawing at the back of my throat.

"Clear!" someone yells.

Her body jumps beneath the paddles.

"Charge to 300. Clear!"

My stomach heaves.

"Charge to 400!"

My hands slam against the glass.

"Clear!"

There's no response. There's too much blood.

"Someone call it," Shepherd whispers.

I scream. "No! Keep trying!" The words cut at the inside of my throat. My hands go numb, banging incessantly against the glass, a single word falling from my mouth in eerie repetition. "No! No! NO!"

"Time of death 10:51 pm."

"NO!"

#

"Callie," she'd murmured across the darkness of their bedroom, already tucked beneath the covers, watching her wife change. "I need you to promise me something."

"Anything," Callie had answered easily, not stopping to look back at her.

"If it was me... If it ever came down to turning off the machines-"

Her wife had turned sharply, catching her gaze. "Don't."

"I want you to turn them off," she'd finished.

"No," had echoed through the shake of a brunette head, the space between them closing. They'd kissed fiercely, trying to erase the images of a sobbing widow that seemed to be haunting them both. "I'm never going to have to live without you."

"If anything ever happens to me," Arizona had continued, "I don't want you to keep me on life support." Full lips had opened to argue, quickly interrupted. "We work in the hospital all day, Calliope. I wouldn't want you to be coming home to that reality, too." She'd taken a deep, shuddering breath. "And if I couldn't be with you in my fullest capacity... I want to believe I'd be with my brother instead, so promise me."

Brunette head had shaken again, harder, sealing her wife's mouth with her own. "Don't," she'd cried, "Nothing is going to happen to you. We have forever."

"Promise me, Calliope," Arizona had repeated, "No extraordinary measures."


	3. Non est ad astra mollis e terris via

**Non est ad astra mollis e terris via**

_"There is no easy way from the earth to the stars"_

The Memory Machine.

It had been a dominating force on the news for nearly a week: the magic machine that would actually allow one to _relive_ their memories. Countless professionals had been weighing in on it - both in amazement and utter fear.

Callie had scoffed as it flashed across the TV screen again, "What a hoax."

Arizona had shushed her, leaning forward.

"Dr. Randolph Lewis, that man most have deemed a 'magician', has reported that he is near completion on his machine, with trials coming closer to 100% accuracy," the reporter had stated. "More after the break."

Arizona had leaned back, finally relaxing against Callie. "You wouldn't do it?"

"What?" Callie had laughed, "No. Are you serious? How many people has he killed already? It's a money ploy."

"But once he gets it right?"

"Arizona, you're a doctor," Callie had stressed, scrunching up her features, "There will always be a risk. I can relive my memories just fine in my head - with no chance of death."

Admittedly, not all of the trials had failed. There'd been a few special cases, participants who'd lived claiming to have felt the touch of a deceased parents fingertips on their cheek or tasted the kiss of a long lost lover. One or two, including the man who'd alerted the media, had woken up with tattoos that hadn't been traced into their skin before going under, but Callie had still been skeptical. It could easily have been faked.

"Would you?" she'd asked softly.

Arizona had shrugged, her eyes searching the room momentarily before settling on Callie's. "You don't know what it's like," she'd whispered, "To lose someone you love and know you'll never see them again. I'd give anything to laugh with Tim, just one more time."

"It's all in your head," Callie had promised, pressing a kiss to Arizona's temple, "Everything is right up there, there's nothing new with the machine. It's all just memories."

Arizona had closed her eyes. "It's still something."

#

"Kill me," I howl, scratching at the tiled floor of the hallway outside OR 2, trying with all my might to beat Arizona to her spot six feet underground. "Oh God, please kill me."

"I'm so sorry, Callie," someone offers, "We did all that we could."

Liars.

Mark pulls me into his lap, stroking my hair, the angles of him both increasingly sharp and softer than ever. I sob roughly, burying my face in his chest. It smells all wrong: musk where I'm craving the coconut of Arizona.

"It's a dream," I suggest, swallowing some of my tears, "We're married. And we're going to have kids together. And married people don't just d-" The last word gets caught in my throat, releasing more of a me. A tsunami of emotion. _This can't be real_.

The door of the OR clicks closed, snapping me to attention. "I have patients," I mumble, wiping tears from my eyes and forcing myself to my feet.

"Cal-" Mark tries, but I push away from him.

"I have patients."

Except I don't. I don't have anything.

#

My eyes open on Denia, loosening the restraints clasped around my arms. "Thrashing?" I ask, earning a nod. Her eyes are red, the obvious stress waning on her and the full force of an orthopedic surgeon flailing on her watch clearly doing nothing to ease the pressure. "Sorry."

She shrugs, wiping at her eyes stubbornly before turning away.

"Once more," he coughs, pulling my focus to where he sits at the window. The curtains have been pulled open at some point, perhaps so he could watch. The thought feels oddly comforting.

"Pardon?" I rasp before the familiar plastic tip of a straw is pressed against my mouth. I take a tentative sip.

"You can only come once more," he says, "Then I'll be gone, and so will she."

I open my mouth to protest, but he continues.

"Love is not an infinite loop, Callie. It is not something you can rewind and play as many times as your heart desires. It grows and it changes, it disappears. You've read that chapter once already - it's time to turn the page."

But that can't be true. She can't just be a chapter when she was meant to be forever. I can't have found my soul mate for only one piece of my life. I can't love her only once; I can barely breathe without her.

I nod, though - he is the magician, after all. This is still his machine.

#

"Cal," Mark calls, knocking heavily on my apartment door. I ignore him, too busy with the piles of paper around me, knowing that he'll eventually lose patience and turn the unlocked handle. He does.

The apartment is different from the last time he saw it: sunlight streams through curtains I've thrown open impulsively, the TV has been turned off so I can read. While there are still various takeout containers strewn about, it almost looks better. Cleaner.

"Who d-" he starts to joke before catching himself. He wanders over to sit on the coffee table, watching me sift through the various piles I've made around myself on the couch. "What are you doing?" he asks.

"She kept it all," I whisper, gesturing to the mass of yellowed pages, surely a look of wonder on my face, "She kept every article about it." I look up, pointing to the now empty box beside him. "I found that, in the guest room closet."

Mark eyes it suspiciously.

"It was filled with these - all of these articles about the machine."

At that, his features harden. He stands quickly, crossing the room to the fridge, which he throws open in search of, undoubtedly, a beer. He'll find nothing of the sort in there. Truthfully, he'll find nothing. I don't miss the groan that escapes his lips upon the discovery.

"Patient X was the first one to make the change," I continue, "A tattoo. He didn't die, Mark, he just made a change. He regretted something and then he didn't anymore."

"Don't-"

"Maybe I could make a change, too." I smile, the very idea curling the edges of my mouth.

"She is dead!" he yells, shocking me into silence, stalking closer so I won't miss a single word. "She is dead, Callie, and you need to bury her. You need to stop going to this bullshit machine and spending all your fucking money on a hoax. You're not touching her, Callie. She's not kissing you. You're not with her - she is dead. And she wouldn't want you to keep doing this."

Except she would, the very proof of that is stacked up all around me. She believed in this just as much as I do.

I stand slowly, closing the space between us even slower. He flinches slightly at the tenseness of it. When he is mere inches from me, I raise a hand and slap him. Hard.

He reels, clutching his cheek.

"Get out," I spit.

He doesn't move.

"I do touch her. I do kiss her."

He shakes his head.

"Get out."

#

The idea follows me to work on Monday morning, tugging at my focus with every chart I try to read. It stands in the corner as I listen to another doctor present on a Peds case that, three months ago, would've been hers. It sets her voice loose in the room, creating giggles on the lips of the little girl who lies silent, fearful, in bed.

I hear _her_ , explaining the resetting of broken bones, see the light ignite in her when a child smiles. I feel her eyes, catching mine across the room, a hesitant smirk at the edges of her lips. She is everywhere around me.

"Dr. Torres?" the new attending asks, snapping me out of my reverie, "Is there anything you'd like to add?"

_Like Dr. Robbins should have your job?_ "No, I think you covered everything."

I walk the hallways of Seattle Grace-Mercy West, seeing her around every corner. She's at the nurses' station, signing off on charts, digging her hands into her pockets to hide the incessant need for movement in her post-surgery high. I hear her heelies gliding across the linoleum of the catwalk, the running stop at her favourite coffee cart.

I know the exact moment where things went wrong; _Kepner, tears welling in her eyes, hands incessantly shaking as she clutches a portable ultrasound_. If they'd just known the severity of her shock, seen the progression of the bleeds. If they hadn't rushed, hadn't made a stupid mistake. If they'd cut open her abdomen first, she'd probably still be alive. They would've had enough time.

It'd be one thing. One change.

One difference, and she wouldn't be dead anymore.

We'd still have forever.


	4. Dolor hic tibi proderit olim

**Dolor hic tibi proderit olim**

_"Someday this pain will be useful to you"_

On Tuesday morning, I pause in front of the bathroom mirror, newly visible amidst the sunlight streaming around curtains that have, surprisingly, stayed open since the weekend. My reflection startles me, the first time I've truly seen it since the morning I laid beneath Arizona's quaking form.

I'm thinner.

I trace my fingers along the shadows of my eyes, sunken and hollow, tinged with the bruises associated with sadness. Weariness. Grieving. My cheeks below them are pale, the zygomatic bones more visible than in any of the pictures on end tables in the living room.

I follow the path of my skeletal system: down my neck, also pale; across my shoulders, pronounced; dipping beneath my sternum to the almost concave shape of my stomach, my abdomen tighter against my organs.

Arizona would've hated this, this disappearance.

My curves are less prominent, my hip bones pushing at the material at the top of my baggy sweats. I drop them to the floor, analyzing the effortless way they fall off me to the tile below. My legs have paled, thinned to nothing. My body... it's nothing. There's nothing to me anymore.

This is what grief looks like, I think.

This isn't healthy, I think.

I could change this, I think.

#

I just have to survive one week, I remind myself as I stalk down a hallway, the blinding linoleum synonymous with hospital pushing a headache into my skull. One single week, five days actually, and I'll be back at Dr. Lewis'. Back in the machine, without Mark telling me to bury Arizona, or Lewis telling me I need to let her go. It'll be Arizona and I again, just the two of us, holding hands and kissing and really being together no matter what anyone says.

And maybe I'll tell Shepherd and Bailey to open up her abdomen first.

Maybe.

"Dr. Torres," Bailey announces loudly, pulling me from my thoughts, "So nice of you to join us."

I look up quickly, expecting to be surrounded by interns or residents or somebody, but it's just her, studying me all suspicious-like. I level her with a gaze of my own.

"I had a femur repair this morning," she continues, "Why weren't you in my O.R.? They sent down Dr. Roft, even though you were here."

I shrug, all my bravado rushing out of me with a breath. My gaze falls to my feet.

"Have you been in the O.R. this week?" she presses.

Again, I shrug.

"Callie Torres," she admonishes, pulling my attention back. Her nostrils flare, a hint of anger washing across her face. Or maybe that's disappointment - I'm not sure I can tell the difference anymore. "You are a gifted surgeon and you are wasting your talent on paper work. You've been sulking around here for months and _nobody_ ," she says with a look that makes _Arizona_ echo in my head, "would want to see you like this."

I sigh. "I don't know what to do."

"You need to take the next step," she tells me, her voice almost soft enough to be comforting, "You need to go back in the operating room and build bones out of nothing. Or hop on a plane and go to Bolivia. Whatever the hell it is, you need to do what makes you happy." She starts to turn away before looking back over her shoulder to add one more thing: "But if you're staying here, you need to shower more 'cause you ain't smelling too doctorly lately."

I laugh in spite of myself, for the first time in what feels like it might be years. I could do what makes me happy; I could really be a doctor again, fixing people. Building bones like God. Giving back the gift of movement. I could be that person again, I think.

But then a much stronger, much louder thought pushes to the forefront of my consciousness: Arizona makes me happy. Saving Arizona would make me happy.

_Alex, heaving into the garbage can. Kepner, eyes welling with tears. Meredith, shouting stats as the team of doctors moves towards the elevator. Arizona, on a gurney, bleeding out._

_I run towards the stairwell, feet barely touching the ground. I fly through the door of the operating room, clutching a mask to my face._

_"Don't cry."_

_"I love you. I will always love you."_

_"It doesn't even hurt."_

_"Dr. Shepherd, Bailey, with all due respect, I think you should start in her abdomen."_

It'd be as simple as that. One sentence. One suggestion. One life saved.

"Callie," Mark tries to interrupt, tentatively wandering up beside me.

I ignore him, taking off down the hall to records. I have to find Arizona's chart, have to be certain I'm right. I have to know if I can bring her back. _We could still have forever._

#

"Calliope," she'd whispered, teeth grazing against presented neck, "You're so beautiful tonight."

The object of her affections had the gall to blush, twirling her gently on the dance floor, the swish of their white gowns making her smile wider. "As are you, my beautiful _wife_."

Arizona had leaned back, reaching her eyes to Callie's, smile brightening her glowing features. "Can we get out of here yet?" she'd suggested conspiratorially before setting her forehead against its match. " _I'd_ like to take _my_ wife to bed."

Callie had giggled, stroking Arizona's bare shoulder with her thumb. "I think people would notice if the brides disappeared from their own reception."

"I don't think anyone would judge me for wanting to see what's under this beautiful dress," Arizona had quipped, eliciting another flush of skin that stretched down into cleavage. "I'd love to see how far that blush goes," she'd added, biting at her bottom lip as she had tried to peek in the space between fabric and breasts.

Callie had twirled them again, eyeing the surrounding area. There were only about thirty people left, all the seasoned partiers. None of them the type to mind if the brides called it a night, as long as the DJ stayed until the end of his contract. "Okay," she'd nodded.

Her wife had beamed, instantly extracting the two of them from each other's arms and taking Callie's hand to drag her across the ballroom. Alex Karev had stepped forward as they passed through the tables, but Arizona had quickly waved him off. "Wedding night, Karev!" she'd called over her shoulder, rewarded with a giggle from the woman holding tight to her fingers.

Callie had let her eyes wander as Arizona had closed and locked their suite door, the _Do Not Disturb_ sign hanging rightfully on the outer handle. Her wife had been shining in her gown, thick, golden curls cascading over freckled shoulders. Callie had reached forward, grasping the zipper of her wife's dress in her fingertips, slowly revealing more of that sun tinged expanse.

Arizona had shivered as Callie's touch burned a path down her bare back. She'd turned, pressing her lips to the other pair, quickly dueling tongue with her own. Her hands had settled in dark curls, pulling pins loose, needing to bury her fingers in those raven locks. "I love you," she'd gasped, feeling her dress being pushed off her body, revealing the cream lingerie she'd chosen for underneath.

She'd wrapped her arms around Calliope, quickly finding and undoing her zipper, too. She'd pushed the dress gently off tanned shoulders, white fabric pooling at their feet, a red bra drawing her attention. "How the hell did you pull that off with a white dress?" she'd asked, running her finger along the edge of a cup.

Callie had laughed, putting her hand under her wife's chin to lift her attention to impossibly dark brown eyes. "I'm a magician," she'd giggled, "How do you think I managed to talk you into forever?"

Arizona had smiled, stretching upwards for a much gentler peck. "I'm so happy I get forever with you," she'd whispered.

"Me too."


	5. Sedit qui timuit ne non succederet

**Sedit qui timuit ne non succederet**

_"He who feared he would not succeed sat still"_

He's waiting for me when Denia guides me into the room. Just like the day, months ago, when I first walked in, he's seated beside the machine, an array of needles set on a tray beside them. He runs his fingers along them absentmindedly, watching me. Denia quickly ducks her head and disappears, leaving me alone in his company.

"Dr. Torres," he says.

"Dr. Lewis."

He smiles, his wrinkles creasing with the effort. Years of work and months of illness have scratched at his features, wearing him down. But this smile is different, like there's a sudden light to him I've never seen before.

"I thought I'd do it one last time," he tells me.

I nod, moving closer to my place in the machine. I lower myself carefully onto the hard plastic chair, taking a deep breath as I do. He slowly wraps the sensors around my head, then presses the sticky adhesive heart monitors against my chest.

"The last time," I whisper, shaking slightly, suddenly horribly aware of possible outcomes. I haven't bothered to think about the negative until this very moment, haven't even considered the likelihood that I will walk out of here today alone, knowing I'll never see Arizona again. No one's brought a person back before.

He smiles again, a hand stilling on the skin above my racing heart. "Are you ready to say goodbye?" he asks.

I look up at him. The light's still there, settled into his eyes, as if he's happy. Which is stupid, I think, because this is the last time for him, too. This machine - his creation - will never be used again after this. He will never flick it on again, never send another person backwards through their life. His life, whatever's left of it, is coming to a close. This is his end, just as much as it could be mine.

"Are you?" I breathe.

His answer comes without hesitation. "I have lived a long life. I have done what I needed to do; I have built my legacy, I have seen my memories, I have made extraordinary things possible." He pauses to take a deep, shuddering breath. "What I wonder, Callie, is whether you've done what you need to do." He lifts his hand off my chest to pick up a syringe, flicking at it with a practiced ease.

I swallow roughly, Arizona's smiling face blurring the edges of my vision: the children we will never get to have; the homes we will never get to live in; the life we will never get to share. Have I built my legacy, I wonder? Have I done everything I need to do?

"Are you ready, Dr. Torres?" he asks again.

Have I done the impossible? Have I been extraordinary?

The answer hits me in the center of my chest, pushing the air from lungs. "I'm ready," I whisper.

He plunges the needle of anaesthetic into my veins. My vision blurs faster, Arizona becomes clearer. " _Calliope,_ " she chuckles. " _Are you coming?_ "

I'm coming, I'm coming.

_I'll save you._

#

"Important emergency, huh?" she mumbles against my cheek, trailing her lips along my jaw. _Mandible_.

I chuckle, pushing my fingers deeper into her. She moans. "The most important," I whisper, pressing my thumb against her bundle of nerves. She moans again, louder.

"Hurry," she coaches, her hips echoing her words with a roll.

I back my hand with a solid thrust of my own, watching as she comes undone even faster. "We still have time," I say with a laugh against her neck, burying the sound in a bite at her beating pulse.

"Not -" she gasps, chewing on her bottom lip, "If I'm going to - OH GOD - fuck you, too."

I swallow, pushing my knee into her center again, using it as leverage for my fingers. Her walls tighten, clenching as she groans. I pull her lip between my own teeth, tugging gently as her body stiffens. A silent calm washes over her, head tilting backwards in pleasure. A smile graces her features in the second before she collapses, panting, on top of me.

"Really, really important emergency," I promise, peppering kisses across her face.

She laughs. "My emergency next."

#

"Dr. Kepner," I ask, looking up at the resident who's been standing at my side for the past eight hours. "Would you like to close up?"

She grins beneath her mask, the corners of her eyes scrunching before she nods.

I let our scrub nurse take the tools from my hands, stepping back to admire Kepner's sutures. "Perfect," I tell her when her shoulders finally relax. "Good job. Go get some sleep." I tug off my mask once a nurse has removed my gloves, knocking my wrist against the sensor to open the door and then shoving everything into the bio-waste bin.

She follows my lead, reaching across the large sink basins to grab a bar of soap. "Oh, I can't," she says, ripping open the packaging. "I promised Hunt I'd spend some time in the ER today and I just haven't had a chance."

"How long have you been here?" I reach for a towel, rubbing it along the length of my forearms.

She looks up, calculating. "Um... thirty... six? Hours."

I laugh, shaking my head. "Get some sleep, Dr. Kepner." With that, I leave the scrub room, heading for the stairs so I can maybe take my own advice.

The path to the on-call room on the fourth floor is familiar, one I've taken many times if only because it's situated comfortably between Peds and Ortho - our own little meeting spot. I collapse onto the bottom bunk, spent from being on my feet so long, even if it was a relatively simple surgery, thanking the heavens that there's only an hour left in my shift.

Banging.

"Callie!"

I open my eyes groggily, surveying the dark room. I must've fallen asleep.

The banging comes again, louder. "Callie, open up!" The door.

"Callie!"

Mark.

I roll off the mattress and cross the distance. Turn the knob. Find his face; pale hollowness.

We run - straight to Emergency.

I turn away as Alex heaves over a trashcan, the sound of his lunch hitting the bottom acting as the timpani beginning a concerto. The pieces of the orchestra come together, a stunned and shaking Kepner the gentle melody of the woodwinds. Next comes the harmony: Meredith Grey.

"Her B.P. is dropping!"

"Hang a bag of O Neg," Hunt orders, steering the gurney and the team towards the elevator. I catch the flash of her face, blue eyes wide.

I rush forward, darting into the elevator behind them.

"What the hell are you doing, Torres?" Bailey hollers.

But I ignore her, grabbing hold of Arizona's hand. "She's B Positive," I correct, looking to Hunt. His expression wavers, somewhere between anger and understanding.

Arizona catches my gaze, a goofy grin on her face. "Calliope," she giggles. "I told Teddy about the emergency. And then we got hit by a _truck_."

I nod, stroking her blood crusted hair back off her face. "I know, I know. What hurts?"

She smiles again, studying my features. "Nothing."

I turn to Bailey at my right, making sure she heard that, watching as realization dawns. The imminent severity of shock.

The elevator doors open, the team running forward to the waiting room. I let Arizona's hand slip out of mine, holding back tears as they disappear into O.R. 2. As silence falls upon the hallway, I collapse, shaking with sobs.

I'm not sure if they're tears of happiness.

Yelling pulls me back, Dr. Shepherd's booming voice escaping into the hallway. I follow the noise, stopping to scrub in hastily and pull on a pair of gloves before tucking a mask against my tear-streaked face and entering the theatre. "With all due respect, Dr. Bailey, if we don't do something about the swelling in her brain, she will not wake up," Shepherd booms. I chance a look in Arizona's direction, her eyes finally closed and an intubation tube being carefully inserted in her throat. Everyone but the anesthesiologist and Bailey seems to flinch at Derek's tone.

"With all due respect, Dr. Shepherd," Bailey yells right back, "If she's in as severe a state of shock as I think she is, she won't wake up either because she will be dead."

I clear my throat, stepping into the battleground. "Start with the abdomen."

Dr. Shepherd shakes his head. "Dr. Torres, this really isn't your-"

"She's my wife," I interrupt. "It is my place."

"She's my patient right now, Callie, and her brain is swelling, so if you'll-"

I brush past him, towards Arizona's prepped body. The machines around her beep, her pressure still low. In one quick motion, before anyone can stop me, I grab a ten blade off the tray.

Start with the abdomen.

There's a slice. Blood. The rush to action.

_I'll save you._


	6. Mutantur omnis hos et mutamur in illis

**Mutantur omnis hos et mutamur in illis**

_"All things change and we change with them"_

The yelling happens instantaneously, a flurry of hands quickly filling the space I opened in her. The blood, significantly less than I remember in the first version of this, is caught with lap pads handed off by scrub nurses.

Owen Hunt is the first to look up, remembering I'm there even when he's wrist deep in Arizona's abdomen. "Someone get her out of here," he directs, nodding at me before turning back to Bailey's frantic search for the tear.

"Suction," Bailey orders as another nurse sets a hand on my shoulder, guiding me gently out of the operating room.

In the scrub room, she reaches up to gently remove my mask, rubbing my back as abrupt breaths try to fill my mouth. "It's okay, Dr. Torres," she soothes, "They have everything under control."

Mark crashes through the door with the end of her sentence, pausing at the sight of my hunched form, my labored breathing. "Callie?" he whispers.

The giggle comes from nowhere, erupting out of the center of my chest loudly. A second follows it, equally out of place. My hand comes up to cover my mouth, eager to halt the sound, but I'm still wearing gloves and they're red with her. And I can't help but think they smell like coconut. Like copper. Like forever. _Arizona_.

I think maybe that's crazy.

So I laugh louder, my other hand pressing against my forehead before I can even think about it. I cut her open. I pressed a scalpel into her skin as though it was any patient; anybody lying on that table.

Mark eyes me carefully, he and the nurse both reaching forward to pull the gloves from my hands, despite the paths they've already made across my face. They're shoved into the bio-waste bin, just like the lap pads full of her blood will be. And Bailey's mask, damp with sweat after a long and stressful surgery. Dr. Hunt's gloves. Arizona's sticky, ripped open clothing. Every trace of this room.

But not her. _Please_ not her. She has to leave this room whole, not a remnant.

I suck back a breath, swallowing my laughter. "She's my tattoo," I whisper.

Mark's brow furrows. "What?" he asks, glancing at the nurse.

"I lost her once, but now she's my tattoo." They seem to have a silent conversation above my head before Mark finally speaks again.

"Callie, do you want to go... talk to someone?" I look up quickly, waiting for him to explain. He stumbles before continuing. "It's just, you've been here all day, and you just... They'll be in surgery for a while, maybe you want to go up to psych or -"

I shrug away from them both, out of their grasps and gentle touches and soothing words. "I'm not crazy," I say. "This isn't shock. I'm not losing it."

Mark tilts his head, as if asking, _are you sure?_

"I'm not crazy," I repeat.

"Okay," he concedes, lifting both his hands up in defeat before tugging me into a hug. I wobble in his hold before leaning into the sharp edges of his frame.

 _I saved her_.

#

I open my eyes to darkness, no recollection of nodding off after Mark wrapped a blanket around my shoulders in the OR gallery. My face feels sticky with sleep, instead of wiped clean of blood by a nurse's calming hands and warm cloth. And the blanket beneath me doesn't feel soft with age like the patient ones, instead scratching and pulling in the way of lesser-washed versions tucked into on-call rooms. There's a pillow beneath my head that doesn't crunch with the sound of plastic when I move.

I sit up quickly, the sharp proximity of what I think could be a top bunk just narrowly missing my skull. I swing my legs free from the covers, stumbling across the room with my hands in front of me before I feel a light switch. I flick it on, squinting when I'm met with an onslaught of brightness.

The room around me is familiar, coming into focus as my eyes adjust. There are two bunk beds, one bottom bed mussed from my own body; a metal cabinet to the left of the door; to the other side, beneath the light switch, is a scratch in the paint made by busy hands wearing a wedding ring that still adorns my finger. An eerie comfort washes over me, knowing I'm in our fourth floor on-call room.

But I have no idea how I got here.

I lunge for my pager on the pillow, searching for the time, but the screen stays blank. It must be dead, I think, which makes the worst realization come rushing back to slam into my chest. She wasn't out of surgery, yet. I have no idea if she's okay.

Why would I be in an on-call room when she was still on the table?

I can't help but wonder if maybe the universe has tossed me backwards, back to the beginning. Because I don't remember feeling the push of the machine, or waking up to the pinch of the needles, and surely Mark didn't carry me across the hospital to tuck me into a bed in an on-call room.

That's crazy.

Maybe I'm crazy.

Or maybe it didn't work.

Maybe any second now Mark is going to be pounding on the door and I'm going to have to relive it all again. More blood in her hair and on her face and they still won't start in the abdomen, so I'll wake up in Dr. Lewis' machine without her. Months of reliving our happiness wasted, leaving me with nothing. No Arizona. No proper goodbye. No forever.

I can't do it again.

I won't do it again.

I rush toward the door, my fingers wrapping around the knob and propelling me into the hallway. It's empty: no nurses bustling about, no doctors running past. It's quiet. Silent.

I walk slowly, carefully, in the direction of Pediatrics, though I'm not sure why. She won't be talking to a patient, waiting for me. She was in a car accident.

The lights are dimmed beyond the double doors, a single person sitting behind the desk at the nurses' station. She looks up, smiling politely. "Dr. Torres," she murmurs, "Can I help you?"

Where's Arizona? What happened?

"The time?" I finally manage, my voice hoarse. I turn away to cough into my shoulder, trying to clear my throat. The room across the hall is empty, its lights out, the curtains on the window left open. Stars hang across the dark canvas of the sky.

"It's just after one," the nurse tells me when I turn back towards her.

"Thank you," I whisper, nodding awkwardly before moving towards the doors I came in through.

The accident happened before eleven, though. Surely it had been longer than two hours when Mark wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. And I'm certainly not reliving it, when she was pronounced dead before midnight. I must be in a different day, I think.

Only, nothing's familiar.

I head for the attendings' lounge, eager to change my clothes and wash the sleep from my face, but somewhere along the way I lose my focus. When I finally look up, the uncomfortable whir of the emergency room is all around me. Even in the middle of the night, there's a certain hum. Children, grown and earning their own worry lines, sit hunched over at the bedsides of parents. Patients still waiting for consults move in fitful states of sleep. Behind a curtain, someone gags loudly.

But Teddy doesn't stand, shaking, in front of the sliding doors with a piece of glass in the side of her head. And Owen Hunt doesn't call for a bag of O Neg. Bailey doesn't yell for someone to book an OR. The hum isn't tragic - it's normal. Predictable, almost.

As predictable as the resident on Arizona's case.

"Is Meredith Grey here?" I ask the woman at the desk, barely paying enough attention to her to catch more than the shake of her head. "Is she in surgery?" I press, praying she'll know.

"She went home hours ago," she says finally.

If Meredith's not here, then -

"You should too, Dr. Torres," she adds.

I turn quickly, finally giving her my full attention: dark brown hair, light blue scrubs. A resident, I guess, though not one I recognize. She knows my name, but I'm not certain I've ever seen her before. "Excuse me?" I ask, realizing I'm not even sure what she said.

My movement, my tone, something, makes her falter. "It's just," she says, sheepish, "You look tired, you've been here all day. You should go home, too."

Would residents be telling me to go home if Arizona was still in surgery? Would Meredith be at home if she was?

I nod, schooling my features into something I hope looks a little softer. I suppose it works because the resident visibly relaxes. "Thank you," I whisper, turning away to escape out the double doors and once again be engulfed by the silence of the hallway.

I get myself to the attendings' lounge the second try, dropping onto the bench in front of my locker with a sigh - equal parts exhaustion and confusion, trying to make sense of where I am. It's not the night of the accident, Arizona's not in surgery, Mark isn't following me around and holding me up. Maybe...

I don't know how to finish that thought. The weight of what certainly feels like a long work day sits heavily on my shoulders, a strangling need for Arizona finding its way inside me with just as much force and drawing a fist around my stomach with nauseating strength. I don't know where I am, or what's going on, or how to find her. If she's even alive.

I choke back a sob.

The door is thrown open, rattling on its hinges and making me jump. Mark strides into the room, a grin on his face. "I," he announces, "just rocked a nose job."

I wipe at my tears, studying him. "At one in the morning?" I ask, mentally grabbing at the first familiar thing all night: my best friend, the one person who never changes, who always makes sense.

He shrugs, dropping onto the bench next to me. "So, it wasn't a self-elected nose job. She'll still look beautiful when she wakes up." One of his hands hooks beneath my chin, lifting my gaze to his eyes. "What's wrong?" he whispers.

I shake my head, running my fingers through my hair.

"The dream again?" he continues, standing up and pulling his shirt off. "You know, Cal, one of these days you're just going to have to accept it and move on. It's been three months."

My body heaves at the mention of time, the sharp taste of parmesan stabbing the back of my throat. I lunge across the room for the garbage can, gagging. Mark sighs loudly from behind me, pulling my hair away from my face, both of us waiting for me to spill my guts. Nothing comes.

"You can't keep doing this to yourself," he whispers, letting go of my hair when I take a deep breath and lean back against him.

"I feel like I'm going crazy," I tell him.

He laughs lightly, patting me on the shoulder. "Go home, get some sleep."

It almost sounds like a good idea when he says it.

So I tug a shirt over my head and put on my jacket and squeeze my legs back into the pair of jeans folded on the shelf in my locker and stumble out of the hospital praying to God that something - anything - will make sense in the morning. That everything will be okay if I just go home and crawl into bed and sleep. Sleep sounds fantastic.

Until the doors of the elevator in my building open and suddenly - coconut. It wafts into the foyer, as familiar as the swipe of cologne Mark put on his bare chest in the lounge, as startling as the taste of parmesan had been in my throat.

I step into the box, breathing in the scent with deep, shuddering breaths. It's coconut shampoo, all around me, as strong as if she were standing right next to me. Like the Friday nights when she would smuggle it into a post-work shower, filling the lounge with her secret trademark and heeding comments about piña coladas and nights off. The Friday nights when I would take her home and kiss her in this very elevator and somehow fall impossibly deeper in love with her - coconut.

The lift dings, metal parting to reveal the fifth floor. The smell is even stronger here, thicker like a burning heat. It coats my lungs. I can taste it on my tongue. I stumble forward, hastily searching for my key to shove into the lock, fighting with my conscience to run away. I could get a drink, a hotel room.

Or maybe a Friday night.

My key finally fits in place, the lock clicking. I throw the door open, pausing. The lights are all off, the apartment silent. I don't hear the shower running.

I don't smell coconut.

Tears pool in my eyes, my brain still screaming at me to run, some horrid voice in my head swearing that she's not here. That she's gone and she's dead and I'm never gonna get to say goodbye.

I slam the door, cursing everything: that stupid machine, Dr. Lewis for inventing it, Denia for helping him when he got too sick. Arizona and her stupid box of articles and her stupid ideas and for dying when she wasn't supposed to. She left me all alone, wasting my money on a bunch of wires that couldn't even bring her back to me.

I drop to the floor, sobs racking through me. Loud enough that I don't hear the bedroom door open at first, and I don't look up until another whiff of coconut fills my nose. The light from the bedroom catches a ring, glinting off a gold band. Fingers dart through messy blonde hair, still damp, releasing the smell. I make out the curve of a cheek, the puckering of a dimple in a tired smile. She rubs at her eyes.

My heart pounds within the confines of my chest, fear squeezing tighter. I'm not sure how to breathe, or blink. Or speak. Her voice fills the room before I can run, the scratch of sleep like piano keys and flat lines in my ears, playing some horrible tune I know by heart, except... she isn't bloody. She isn't dead. She's -

"Calliope?"


	7. Exitus acta probat

**Exitus acta probat**

_The result validates the deeds_

I can feel the crack of my voice before I even open my mouth, the sharp hitting of a note beyond my range as poignant as metal against glass.

Shattering glass, erupting across the console of that old Mazda and sticking daggers in her beautiful face and spilling blood thick with the smell of copper.

She smells like coconut - dropping right off the tree, hitting the ground, and cracking open with a thud.

The thud of her head against the dashboard as she rolled off the side of the airbag, her body flailing with the heave of the car.

I heaved in the lounge, the taste of parmesan stabbing at the back of my throat, and once before, in a different three months, when she'd been dead and my stomach contents had wrapped themselves around old chop suey.

The seatbelt wrapped around her abdomen and wreaked havoc on her insides, filled the peritoneum with thick, arterial blood.

Like the blood on her face and in her hair and all over the operating room floor.

I sliced a scalpel through her skin.

"Arizona?"

But she lived.

"Calliope?" she repeats, stumbling towards me, limbs heavy with exhaustion. _She was sleeping in our bed_. "What's wrong?"

Nothing.

I wipe stubbornly at the tears coating my cheeks, something somewhere between a strangled sob and a choked-back laugh falling loudly off my lips. It startles her, halts her movement before she rushes forward and drops to her knees in front of me.

"Why are you crying?" she whispers, a pale hand reaching up to stroke my cheek. I flinch before her fingers meet my skin, another pitch of laughter exulting into the space between us.

Us.

Not me, not her - us. Both of us, together, in the same room. Alive and breathing.

I grab her face, a hand on either side of her jaw - _mandible_ \- my thumbs hooking on the patches of skin that dimple in her smile, where they used to fit in the seconds before I kissed her.

I want to kiss her.

I want to flick my tongue against the insides of her teeth and bite her bottom lip and feel the rush of a quickening pulse beneath my palms. I want to taste her breath and bury my nose in the coconut of her hair, feel the warmth of her skin on my fingertips. I want the electricity of touching her, the fireworks of pressing my lips against her own. I want it all, everything.

Her.

"Callie?" she says, blue eyes dancing back and forth across my face. "Are you okay?"

I shake my head, entranced by her. The three freckles on the right side of her nose; the way her mouth tilts upwards a little more on the left; the mole that sits in the dip of her cleavage, on display in the over-sized t-shirt she's wearing. One of mine, I think. The blue of her eyes as clear as the curve beneath a white capped wave, crashing into the shore and bursting apart. Waves I used to leap through as a child, a colour I still lose myself in after all these years.

I'm not sure I ever told her that.

I'm not sure I ever told her how much I love her.

"I love you," I say now, "And I will always love you, and nothing's ever going to take you away from me and I used to dive through your eyes when I was little and-"

"Callie," she cuts me off, shaking her head, "I love you, too."

I lean forward quickly, catching her lips with my own, pushing hard and with all the vigor I can muster. She pulls away when I open my mouth to run my tongue along her lips, begging for something deeper. Something louder, more concrete.

"What happened?" she asks, stroking my hair back off my face.

I shake my head again, surging forward for another kiss, but she leans away, grabbing onto my shoulders to slow me down.

"Did you have the dream again?" she whispers, her brows as furrowed and worried as Mark's were when he asked the same thing. _You can't keep doing this to yourself_.

What dream?

"Callie," she soothes, swiping her thumb across my cheek to collect another tear that's made its escape. "You can't keep doing this to yourself."

I drop my hands from her face.

"It's been three months since the accident."

I recoil, pulling away from her quickly and jumping to my feet, dashing across the apartment for... something. Anything.

Three months.

The night Teddy and I sat in Joe's drinking tequila, wiping our eyes with cocktail napkins and busying our hands with beer nuts. Talking about the rain on the road and the right of way and how stupid it was to think that one idiot drove drunk through Seattle a week before St. Patrick's Day. That people drank before driving at all.

"We need to talk about it eventually, Calliope," she swears, on her feet as well and clicking the lock into place.

The lock that clicked shut behind Mark, after a banging garbage can lid silenced our argument, three months after the accident.

The accident.

"I'm alive, Calliope," she promises, "I'm not dying. I'm right here."

"But you did die," I whisper, a shuddering breath filling my chest, "I did lose you."

Arizona shakes her head, stepping in front of me and wrapping her hands around the nape of my neck. She tugs me close, our foreheads resting against each other. "It was just a dream," she murmurs. "It was all just a dream. I'm alive, I'm right here."

_Forever._

#

I wake up shaking, shivering between the sheets even though there's sunlight pouring across my body, the curtains thrown open. I never open the curtains in the morning, Arizona always -

Arizona.

I remember like a hurricane, full force winds slamming against my chest and ripping the air from my lungs. Because my bed is empty. I've woken up alone, when I swear I kissed her lips and held her hand and felt her slip her leg in the space between my own before I fell asleep. I swear it happened, realer than the first - first, first - day of the accident, when she hastily pressed her thumb against my clit and moaned along with me as I came beneath her fingertips.

I kissed her last night, in our apartment. I brought her back. I saved her.

I leap from the bed, storming across the room to the closed door, throwing it open. She's not in the bathroom, analyzing her face in the mirror or perched atop the toilet seat. In the kitchen, the tap drips, an empty mug left on the counter. A half pot of coffee sits in the percolator, warm or cold I'm not sure, I'm too busy screaming in my head.

And then out loud. "Arizona? Arizona!"

But she's gone. She's not here, and I'm crazy. I dreamed her back and it wasn't real and I thought it was real, I thought I'd saved her and she'd promised me forever again and everything was going to be okay, everything was going to -

The door opens.

I choke on the lump in my throat.

Blonde hair swishes.

The door clicks shut.

"Good morning," she singsongs, floating across the apartment like a cloud. Depositing a box on the counter, the Krispy Kreme logo easily giving its contents away; a tray with two coffees; the morning paper. "How did you sleep?"

I turn slowly, watching her, my feet glued to the floor beside the couch, trying desperately to remember a morning when she brought me donuts and wore the ugliest blue track pants and had her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and not a stitch of makeup on her face.

I can't remember a single time she's looked more beautiful. Not a single morning just like this one.

"What day is it?" I whisper.

She looks to the ceiling for a moment, thinking, humming as she bites into a sprinkled mess. "Wednesday?"

"What day?" I repeat, still unmoving.

She finally looks at me, her brow furrowing slightly. "Callie?" she asks, "What's wrong?"

"What day is it?" I say again, voice harder. She flinches a little at my tone, sets down her donut and moves around the counter towards me.

"The tenth," she answers, tentatively reaching a hand out to me.

I lean away from her touch. "Of June?" I whisper.

She nods.

The tenth of June.

Three months.

I collapse into her, crushing her against me, burying my face in her neck.

Because she's real. She's back. It's been _three months_ , but I saved her.

I _saved_ her.


	8. Alea iacta est

**Alea iacta est**

_The die has been cast_

The hospital looks different without the dark of night; without the heavy weight of exhaustion, confusion pushing against my skull. The day has brought sunlight, casting shadows across the building. My mind plays tricks on me, turning windows into eyes and making the opening and closing of automatic doors sound like breathing lungs. People disappear inside, swallowed whole, while I find myself listening for a wheeze.

"Callie?" Arizona calls, a few steps ahead, turning around to look at me.

Begonias line the sides of the path - a stark shade of purple. I can remember the daffodils of early spring, tulips so red that I gagged at the sight, but it's early summer now. Begonias are in bloom.

"Callie?" Arizona repeats, stepping closer, running a hand down my arm. "Are you okay?"

I shrug, shaking myself out of my reverie to meet her gaze. I feel a smile pushing at the edges of my mouth and begging me to give in. I forgot how that felt; that uncontrollable happiness connected with just looking at her. Just being near her is enough to set a butterfly loose within the confines of my stomach. She still takes my breath away.

"I'm okay," I promise, leaning forward to meet her lips with my own. "I love you," I whisper as we part.

"I love you, too," she says with a smile, slipping her hand into mine.

Together, we walk inside a lung. I stop listening for a wheeze; I'm too busy trying to remember what begonias mean. I think someone told me once.

#

"Dr. Torres," someone calls, sneakers squeaking as they round a corner too quickly. "Dr. Torres," they repeat, bounding towards me.

I turn to see a young doctor - her light blue scrubs and disheveled appearance making that blaringly obvious. She looks like the type of surgeon I used to be before I became an attending, willing to spend weeks at a time within the hospital in hopes that one special case would come along. And it appears one has, because she seems to bounce within her shoes, manila folder clutched against her chest.

"Senna Hamilton," she announces, holding out a hand for me to shake. I find myself staring at it instead. Now that she's closer, she looks familiar, but I can't seem to place her face.

She drops her hand and offers me the folder instead. I open it quickly, eyes scanning the page. Young girl, just 12 years old, intracapsular fracture of the femur. No wonder she's so excited; a break like this one is rare in anyone younger than 60. But it seems the girl was in a car accident, tossed around the back seat hard enough to crack the bone within her hip socket. She'll need surgery, indefinitely.

"Where is she?" I ask.

"They have her sedated in triage, Dr. Torres," the young woman answers, falling into step next to me as I continue down the hallway.

I'd give anything for a coffee, I think distractedly, suddenly feeling as normal as _before_. "Tell them to book an OR," I direct, "Page Dr. Robbins, she'll want to assist."

She nods, but instead of accepting my dismissal she speaks again. "Can I scrub in?"

I stop midstride, turning to look her over once more. I still can't seem to place her, her bright green eyes so familiar they're making me uncomfortable. She nudges a pair of dark framed glasses up off her face, setting them carefully in her messy, dark brown hair.

"I'm a resident," she offers, "Second year, but I'm interested in Orthopedics. I've watched a few of your Peds surgeries: Dr. Robbins was going to introduce us - she thinks I'd make a good candidate for your fellowship one day."

At the mention of my wife, I soften. "You were in the ER last night," I murmur, finally placing the stubborn expression and lopsided ponytail. "You told me to go home."

She nods.

"Go get our patient prepped," I tell her, "And I'll see you in the operating room."

#

"Oh, did you already scrub?" I ask, entering the room with two coffees clutched in my hands. Arizona stands at the basin, shaking her wet hands. "I come bearing coffee."

She sighs happily, reaching for a towel. "I did scrub, but I'll do it again if it means I get a coffee before we go in." She takes a cup from my hand, pulling a long sip out of it. "Thank you," she says in a breath between drags.

I laugh, setting my own cup against my lips to finish it off. Once I've swallowed the last drop, I toss it into the waste bin, reaching for some soap to begin my scrub.

"So, I met Dr. Hamilton," I offer as conversation.

"Senna? Yeah, she's wonderful," Arizona answers, dropping her own cup into the bin and joining me at the sink. "She's been an awesome help up in Peds, but she never stops talking about Ortho."

"She asked to scrub in for this one."

"Oh, yay!" Arizona giggles, nudging at my hip with her own. "I'll get you both acquainted, then. You'll love her; super smart, comes from a family of scientists and doctors."

I shake my hands, following my wife into the operating room where nurses help us into our gowns and gloves. The door opens, Senna and another nurse wheeling our patient in. There's a bubbly little smile on the young girl's face, one to match on the resident's.

"Hello, Thea," Arizona greets, leaning over the operating table once our patient is situated on it. "I'm Dr. Robbins, and over there is Dr. Torres. We're going to fix your hip, okay?"

The young girl nods, clearly heavily sedated. She'd probably been screaming when the ambulance first brought her in. She mumbles something and Arizona leans closer.

"What was that, Thea?"

"Call me Teddy," she says louder, "Like my friends."

Arizona seems to pale, straightening herself and then looking to Senna for an explanation. They both wait, silently, until the mask is placed over Teddy's face and she slips from consciousness.

"I'm sorry," Senna whispers, "She was scared, so I told her the doctors are her friends. Her mom and dad call her Thea, but all her friends -"

"Call her Teddy," Arizona finishes. She turns to a nurse. "You might want to change that on her chart."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Robbins," Senna apologizes, "I didn't know."

Arizona shakes her head, pushing a smile onto her face beneath her mask. It doesn't reach her eyes, though, which makes my stomach churn slowly. "How about we get started?" she asks instead, looking to me.

I nod, stepping up to the table. But my mind is busy racing backwards, trying to find some memory I just don't have. Because I know that look, the one taking over Arizona's face though she's trying very hard to hide it. It's the one that brings home donuts and needs a hug. The furrowed brow, slightly glassy eyes; it's the remains of grief.

#

The surgery goes just as expected. I reduced the fracture before deciding on a single compression hip screw - a choice that made Senna bounce, once again, with her delight. Arizona remarked pleasantly on the lack of avascular necrosis, the blood supply still in the femoral head a vote of confidence for our young patient's recovery. We scrubbed out on a high, Arizona suggesting an early lunch in the cafeteria.

Which is where we sit now, two empty salad containers pushed away on the table and an open bag of chips between us. Arizona crunches thoughtfully, eyeing Cristina as she wanders over to join us.

"Hey," Cristina announces, dropping in a chair opposite, her tray hitting the table loudly. Lexie trails behind her, lowering herself into another seat.

I set a hand on Arizona's thigh, squeezing gently in a silent apology for our loss of alone time. She offers me a soft smile in return.

"You look tired," I say, turning to Cristina, certain that such a comment will result in an exciting tale of surgery. But instead Cristina furrows her brow.

"I haven't been getting much sleep; Karev's screwing some second year and she's a screamer."

Lexie's face darkens to a deep shade of red while I stifle a laugh. Arizona has the gall to look surprised. "Please not Dr. Hamilton," she exclaims.

Cristina shakes her head. "It's not Hamilton."

"Senna's always here," Lexie adds on. "Her dad's a patient."

I look to Arizona, watching as her eyebrows rise higher on her face, a sure sign this is information she didn't know.

"Yeah, he's down in general," Lexie continues. "Liver failure."

Arizona tilts her head. "She told me her dad was a scientist."

Lexie nods emphatically. "Oh, he was: his name was pretty big in the development of various SSRIs. I've read a few of his papers on memory recollection after traumatic events."

Cristina makes a face, biting into a carrot forcefully. "He's comatose," she says around her mouthful, "Not like he's very interesting, now. They're just going to pull the plug in a few days anyway."

"He's dying?" Arizona murmurs, looking to Lexie. "She hasn't said anything."

Lexie shrugs. "She's always in his room when she's not working, I figured everyone knew."

Arizona shakes her head, features soft when she turns her head in my direction. "We should stop by and offer our condolences."

I simply nod in agreement, entranced by her expression - one I haven't seen since she hovered over me last night. When I thought she was a mirage, and yet, here she is. She's alive. And she's so beautiful. I fight the urge to lean forward and capture her lips, aware of the presence of patients' families all around us. My breath hitches as I realize how easily I've fallen back into being with her, how effortlessly I've forgotten what it was like before. How simple it's been to just adapt to this new... reality. The reality that I fixed it, I saved her.

She squeezes my hand on her thigh, pulling me from my reverie. "We could go now?" she asks. "I have a little time before my next surgery."

I nod once more, standing up and pulling her with me. I run a hand down her arm as we say goodbye to our tablemates, before escaping into a quiet stairwell just outside the cafeteria.

I slip my hand into hers in our new found privacy, tugging her against my body so I can press a kiss to her lips. She smiles as we part, eyelids opening slowly.

"What was that for?" she whispers.

I shrug. "You're just so beautiful."

She hums, leaning forward for another quick peck. "Flattery will get you everywhere."

I laugh, lifting a hand to run it through her blonde hair. "Are you okay?" I ask softly.

She nods, her eyes finally dropping away from mine, her hand absentmindedly playing with my lab coat. "It just caught me off guard," she says quietly, "to hear her name when I wasn't really expecting it. I haven't really talked about her that much since the accident."

I feel her breathe in sharply as I try to backtrack through my head. Whose name? Does she mean the car accident? Is this the grief I saw on her face in surgery, the reason Senna apologized so profusely?

"It's just so hard," she murmurs. "She's supposed to be here. Teddy isn't supposed to be dead."


	9. Minima maxima sunt

**Minima maxima sunt**

_The smallest things are most important_

I freeze at her words, my own breath catching in my throat, my hand stilling in her hair. I let go of her, stumbling backwards. Because Teddy is supposed to be here - Teddy survived the accident with minor injuries. Teddy was fine, she was always fine.

Only, here she isn't. Here, she's dead.

"Callie?" Arizona asks, brows furrowing as she looks up at me.

I shake my head, backing up until my heel hits a step and I collapse onto the stairs, pulling my knees close against my chest. This is the consequence, for my actions. This... reality where Arizona lives and instead Teddy dies.

Teddy, who cut open chests and fixed hearts. Who served in Afghanistan; who saw roadside bombs and assault rifles and instead lost her life in a car accident in Seattle, Washington.

"Callie?" Arizona says again, hands frozen at her sides.

This is all my fault. A person is dead - a person who shouldn't be dead. A doctor. A surgeon. Teddy. Beautiful, wonderful, supportive Teddy. Who cried with me over tequila and who blamed herself every single day for the loss of Arizona. The guilt isn't hers to carry anymore - it's mine.

This is the consequence Dr. Lewis spoke of, on the television. The fault in his machine. He said you could go back a thousand times, live a thousand things over, but something would change. Something always has to change. You can't fuck with fate and expect it to be roses and sunshine on the other side. The other side is death. It's always death.

A sob escapes, loud and startling. It echoes in the stairwell.

"It's okay," Arizona murmurs.

It's not okay. Nothing's okay anymore.

I may have her back, but everything else is wrong.

"How?" I choke out.

She looks away, turning back slowly. "How?" she repeats.

I nod, swiping at my cheeks. "How did she..."

She lowers herself onto the step, a few feet between us. "Callie," she says softly, "we've been over this. A thousand times. You and Mark have talked about this. Do you..." She sighs, pushing her hair back off her face. "Do you want to go back to the psychiatrist?"

She finally gives in and drops her head into her hands, covering her eyes. She seems... exhausted. Exasperated. "I can't keep doing this, Callie," she whispers. "I can't keep reminding you over and over again what happened. The dream isn't real." She looks up, gesturing between us. "This is real."

I shake my head, moving closer to her, grabbing hold of her hand tightly. "I know this is real, Arizona. I know you're here, and I'm here and that we're okay." I wipe stubbornly at my cheeks, trying to stave off the flow of tears, but to no avail. "I just... I have to tell you-"

The sound of a pager slices through the air, halting our conversation.

"I have surgery," she says.

I nod.

She leans forward, kissing me softly. "We'll talk more later," she promises as she stands.

And still, all I can do is nod as she walks away.

I have to find Mark.

#

"Mark!" I call after him, running down the hallway. I've already stopped into the Attending's lounge to wash my face and dry my tears, trying desperately to keep my crazy quotient at a minimum. Because, from what Arizona said, this conversation may not be pretty.

He turns on his heel, opening his arms as though he's presenting something. "Torres!" he answers, "There's that overzealous attitude I've been looking for. Teach that to my residents, would you? They're all dark and moody today."

I can't help but smile at the easy demeanor - one we'd been missing before. Three months of pizza boxes and used tissues seems to weigh on a friendship. But this Mark? This Mark is normal and outgoing and... eyeing up a nurse. I smack him in the arm, pulling his attention back.

"You busy?" I ask.

He shrugs, strolling down the hallway as I fall into step next to him. "I have no big butts, and I cannot lie."

I nudge him with my shoulder, watching as another smile fills his face.

"What can I help you with?"

I stop in front of an on-call room door, turning the handle and gesturing for him to step inside.

"Callie," he murmurs, dropping his eyes and shaking his head. "We -"

"We're just talking," I interrupt, pulling him in behind me.

He sighs as the door clicks shut, leaning against it. "What's up, Cal?" he asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

And suddenly I'm horribly, terribly nervous. Like, pace the floor nervous because I have no idea how to say this. How do you tell someone that you kind of sort of used a time slash memory machine thing to go back to the night of a fatal accident and save the life of the woman you're quite certain is your soul mate, only to discover that said accident would then kill your wife's best work buddy and possibly the greatest cardiothoracic surgeon you've ever seen save for your old roommate? And how do you tell someone information like that without getting tossed on the crazy train?

I let my feet run just as fast as my thoughts, back and forth across the tiled floor, wondering if maybe I should say everything in Spanish so at least he won't understand. Except, I need answers. I need a lot of information that I'm pretty sure Arizona won't give me.

I chance a look at him, his expression only making me even more nervous. Because if I truly grasped all that Arizona was implying in the stairwell, about the three months of this reality being chock full of crazy Callie, I may very well find myself in the psych ward in the next ten minutes. And as much as I respect the field of psychology, it's not exactly a concept I feel like exploring right now.

"Callie," he begins, "Did you talk to Arizona? We discussed this happening, that -"

"I did something," I say, talking over him, "Maybe a bad something, I'm not sure. And I don't think you'll believe me, but I really need you to, without thinking I'm crazy or losing it."

He uncrosses his arms, stepping forward to grab onto my shoulders. "Cal, you can tell me anything," he swears. "Always. That hasn't changed."

I nod slowly, looking up at him and then taking a deep breath. "Promise you won't try to lock me up?" I whisper, pleading.

His mouth stretches into a straight line, his lips disappearing before he nods. "I promise."

I take another deep, shuddering breath. "I'm not the Callie you've known for the last three months," I start, holding up a hand when he opens his mouth to say something. "Let me just say this all. I'm from a different... reality, I guess. See, where I'm from, Arizona didn't survive the car accident in March. She, uh... she bled out, in surgery. Her liver had ruptured and by the time they opened up her abdomen she'd lost too much blood."

"Like in your dream," he whispers softly, letting go of my shoulders. He backs away to sit on a bed, keeping his eyes on me despite the defeated hunch of his body.

"I don't know what dream you're talking about, because I'm from somewhere else. In my reality, it was Teddy who survived the accident. But I was so... destroyed, living without Arizona. I didn't know how to be without her.

"There's this doctor - an inventor or a scientist or something - and he created this machine. It's called The Memory Machine: it was all over the news. I went to this machine and it let me go back and relive my time with Arizona. But then, I figured out I could change things. I could change what happened to Arizona, what went on in her surgery.

"And I did it, Mark. I ran in and cut her open and they managed to stop the bleeding and she lived, but that's the last thing I remember before waking up in an on-call room last night."

He finally looks away, dropping his head into his hands. "This sounds an awful lot like your dream, Callie." He breathes loudly, looking back up at me. "Did Arizona talk to you?"

I shake my head. "She had to go to surgery. Listen, Mark, you have to believe me. I don't remember anything. I didn't know Teddy was dead until about ten minutes ago."

"Callie," he sighs.

I huff, collapsing onto the bed next to him. "Can you just humour me for like, ten minutes?" I beg, "Just tell me what I'm missing?"

After a moment of silence, he nods. "Fine. But... this is the last time, Callie. You can't keep doing this to yourself or to Arizona. She wasn't kidding, Cal. She's going to leave you."

For what seems like the millionth time today, I freeze. All of me except my heart, which suddenly feels like it's trying to rip its way out of my chest it's beating so fast. She's going to leave me?

Mark looks over at me, realization dawning on his face. "You didn't know?" he whispers. "She told you a week ago, Callie." He runs his fingers through his hair, jumping to his feet to retrace the path I paced earlier. "It's all we've talked about for a week, Cal, you've been torn apart about it. We talked about it yesterday, before you crashed in an on-call room. You didn't want to go home, you said, because you thought she'd be gone, you..." He trails off, pausing to look at me. "You're not lying," he whispers. Within a second, he's next to me, tugging at my hands.

I wipe at a stray tear that's leaked down my face. "Tell me everything. Please."


	10. Respice, adspice, prospice

**Respice, adspice, prospice**

_Examine the past, examine the present, examine the future_

"So then, what about Teddy?" I prompt, leaning against the wall behind a bunk, my knees tucked up under my chin. Mark lounges on the bed across from me, munching on a bag of chips he found unopened on the desk - some poor resident's abandoned lunch.

He swallows before speaking. "So, after you took off onto the elevator, Teddy came stumbling over with this chunk of glass in the side of her head. All she kept saying was sorry, so I took her into a trauma room and told Avery to get her cleaned up.

"And then the nurse at the desk said that another nurse had just called from the operating room, saying you'd rushed into the room and sliced Arizona's abdomen open. She said the bleeding was crazy, that they needed some extra hands. I told Jackson to go for me, and told April to clean up Teddy's wounds. Alex was still throwing up, I don't know. I sent all the other residents I could."

"You came to me?" I ask.

"Yeah," he whispers. "I found you in the scrub room, laughing."

"I remember that part," I tell him, "I remember until you gave me a blanket in the gallery."

He nods fervently, sitting forward. "Kepner was in shock, they said. Just shaking."

"She'd been there all day. Like thirty-six hours or something ridiculous."

"She collapsed. And I guess no one even realized Teddy was there..."

A mistake. Another mistake in the hospital, what had killed Arizona in the end. Her fate. Because if Kepner had gotten the ultrasound to them in time, they would've known better, they would've opened up her abdomen first. I never would've had to rush into surgery.

"She had a bleed, too, Callie. By the time a nurse found her..."

He takes a shuddering breath before continuing.

"She was pronounced brain dead and they pulled the plug a week later."

I feel bile creeping up the back of my throat, the parmesan from on top of my salad stabbing at my taste buds. I swallow it back down.

It's all my fault, though. I made the wrong change. If I'd gotten the ultrasound first, and then run into the elevator, let them see instead of cutting her open... Jackson would've been with Teddy instead of April, and Teddy would've gotten to CT. She would've lived.

"Where's April?" I ask.

Mark sighs, squishing the empty chip bag in his hands. "She left the program, Callie. Senna Hamilton took her place about a month ago."

That's why I didn't know her. She existed here in this reality. Everything was starting to make sense, except -

"Why is Arizona going to leave me?"

Mark runs a hand down his face, standing up so he can toss the chip bag in a little trash can beside the desk. "About a month after the accident, you started having these dreams... You'd wake up swearing that Arizona was dead, that she'd died that night. You were inconsolable. She took you to a psychiatrist, they gave you medication, you went to marriage counseling, but it just kept happening. At least once a week, you wake up with no idea what's happened. It's -"

"Exhausting," I whisper. Just as exhausting as it was to wake up in the machine after my weekly appointments. Appointments that began just a month after the accident. Twenty-four days, to be exact.

"She told you a week ago, that it had to stop. She can't keep going through it, Callie. She can't keep being reminded that she shouldn't have survived that. That her best friend didn't."

#

I find Arizona in the scrub room after her surgery, a bright smile on her face. "How'd it go?" I ask, leaning against the door while she shakes her hands off above the large sink basin.

"Wonderful. I took out all the necrotic bowel, Jamie should be eating solid foods again in no time." She giggles, drying her hands on a towel.

I can't help but smile at her, reaching forward to run a finger down her cheek.

She pulls away, dropping her towel into the waste bin. "Senna's shift ended about an hour ago. Did you still want to come with me to her dad's room?"

I don't answer, stepping closer to her.

"Callie," she whispers, dropping her gaze.

I wrap my arms around her, tugging her tight against me. "I'm sorry," I murmur into her neck.

She presses her lips against my shoulder, a feather light kiss through my lab coat. "Don't," she whispers in return.

So I seek out her mouth, wrapping my own around it and breathing her in. She bites into my lower lip, making me moan. I flick my tongue out, asking for permission, and she opens her mouth. I push against her tongue, rolling mine around it. Her fingers find their way into my hair, pulling me harder into her.

When we part, her skin is flushed; her nose a little red, her cheeks pink. A smile creeps onto her face and she slides her hands down the sides of my neck as she removes them from my hair.

"I love you," I swear.

"I know," she answers, "I love you, too."

"I'm sorry," I repeat. "Please don't leave me."

Her response is barely even a whisper. "Please come back to me."

#

Senna's exactly where Lexie said we'd find her, pacing in front of the nurse's station in General. Her glasses are on her face again, but her ponytail has been replaced with a tight French braid and her scrubs with a loose fitting pair of jeans and an oversized sweater. She stops pacing when she sees us.

"Dr. Robbins," she smiles. "How'd Jamie's surgery go?"

"Perfect," Arizona grins.

Senna nods, glancing nervously over her shoulder at a room. "Did you need something?" she asks, "Because my shift just finished, so -"

Arizona steps forward, placing a gentle hand on her arm. "Lexie told me, about your dad. I - we, just came by to tell you how sorry we are. If you need time off, or -"

Another person steps out of the room Senna's been pacing in front of. She has the same dark brown hair, the startlingly familiar green eyes. Except, I'd know this woman anywhere.

"Who's this, Senna?" she interrupts.

"Dr. Robbins, the head of Pediatrics," I hear Senna say, but my mind is a thousand miles away. "And this is Dr. Torres, she's the Ortho attending I was telling you about."

A whole reality away.

"Dr. Torres, Robbins, this is my sister, Gardenia."

"Denia," she corrects, holding out a hand to me. "All my friends call me Denia."

I take her hand, watching as her eyes flick up to me. The same, bright green eyes of Dr. Lewis' nurse, who sent me backwards once a week for two months.

"Come inside," she says now. "Say hello to our father."

But if Denia is Senna's sister, and their father is in liver failure...

I follow them into the room, stopping in the doorway even though Arizona lets herself be lead right up to the head of the bed. When she shifts out of the way, I get the answer to my hunch.

Their father is Dr. Randolph Lewis.

Their father made The Memory Machine.


	11. Veritas vos liberabit

**Veritas vos liberabit**

_The truth shall make you free_

I stumble backwards, out of the room, colliding with a passing nurse before I turn on my heel and run. My running shoes smack against the linoleum, like they did that night three months ago when I ran to the emergency room. Only this time I'm running from something and my feet are a million times louder and there's screaming in my head because everything is absolutely, horribly wrong. Because Teddy is dead and Dr. Lewis is dying and suddenly Denia was more than just a nurse who answered an ad in the newspaper. Dr. Lewis has daughters. Dr. Lewis has a life here, something real.

I barge into our usual on-call room, startling a couple of residents swapping spit on a bunk. "Get out!" I yell, sending them fleeing and certainly alerting the entire floor to where I am. I don't bother locking the door; I know someone will come after me soon enough. Instead, I pace the floor in long, loping strides - two to each side.

Everything is backwards here. I never thought - I never even imagined - that so much would change just because I'd saved Arizona. It was all meant to be like before, but with her there. The two of us talking about children and buying a house, about starting our lives. We were never meant to be mourning deaths. Losing residents from the program.

And I thought I'd have Dr. Lewis, at least! If something went wrong, he was always supposed to be back in that old building with the machine, waiting there with a second chance, and he'd understand. He was the scientist, and this was our experiment and if it didn't work he could fix it. He was supposed to fix everything if I couldn't.

But I ruined all of it.

I collapse onto a bed, defeated and very aware of how unstable I feel. Maybe Arizona was right to want to leave me - I feel crazy here. I think I am crazy, here. At least without her I had a reason.

She opens the door slowly, tilting her head slightly to the left and allowing the lights from the hallway to illuminate her ponytail. She's taken off her scrub cap, shoved it haphazardly in the pocket of her scrubs. The wispy hairs around her face have curled, a side effect of working in a warm operating room. She brushes them off her forehead as she closes the door.

"What was that?" she asks softly, leaning against the wall as the telltale sound of a lock clicks into place.

Tears sting at the backs of my eyes and I bite at my bottom lip to hold them back. She knows the look, knows the signs that I'm breaking. She steps forward, lowers herself between my legs.

"Callie," she whispers, setting her hands gently on my thighs, "What happened?"

But she isn't Mark. And she isn't really Arizona, not the woman I know. The last three months have changed her. Changed us both. I'm not sure how to tell her, even though I need to. I need the truth out; I need to stop struggling and holding all this in. It's been less than 24 hours and I'm exhausted.

I just want her back.

I want her to have me back.

"I need to tell you something," I begin, tugging at her hand until I can pull her to sit on the bed next to me. I run my thumb down her cheek. My breath hitches when she closes her eyes. The tears begin to fall.

I lean forward and press my lips against her own. Just a soft peck, just something gentle to remind her that I love her. Just in case; this Arizona could leave me.

"You didn't know?" she asks, "That Senna's father was Dr. Lewis, from the news?"

I shake my head as I wipe at my tears. "I know him."

"What are you talking about?"

"I need you to listen to what I have to tell you. Because I can't lose you, Arizona, not again. Not ever." The tears fall faster. I give up trying to wipe them away.

She sucks in a breath and for a second I think she might just stand up and leave. That it might just be over, as simple as that. I choke out a sob that makes her freeze.

"Okay," she whispers. "But that's it, Callie. This is the last time."

I have to _make_ her believe.

"That scar on your shoulder isn't actually from falling off your bike - it's from jumping off a shed when you were six years old, pretending you could fly."

She stills.

"Your brother tried to run away because he thought it was his fault; he'd given you his Superman cape to play with."

"I've never -" she tries to interrupt, but I press on.

"When you were seven you told your Mom you were going be Pocahontas, and then you tried to colour your hair black with a magic marker. You slept in the backyard in a tent for all of one night before you gave up on that idea and decided to be Ariel, but your mom wouldn't let you sleep in the bathtub.

"When you were nine, you kissed a girl on your little league team. Her brother punched your brother in response. You begged your mom to let you quit the team, but she refused. You won the championship tournament that year."

"I've never told you these things," she whispers, shaking her head. "How do you...?"

"Your mom told me, after you died."

She jumps up, crossing the room to stare at the wall. "Callie," she murmurs, her voice cracking.

"I'm from somewhere else," I continue. "The dreams were... I don't know what they were. I can't explain it. But I can tell you that Dr. Lewis is a brilliant scientist who created an amazing machine. A machine like nothing you've ever even imagined, and you believed in it. You filled a box in your closet with articles about it."

She shakes her head, turning back around to face me. "I threw all of that out. They retracted his story, said he'd made it all up. They blamed it on the cancer."

"That's not true." It can't be true. "Dr. Lewis made The Memory Machine. It worked. I know, because I used it. I used it to save you."

She shakes her head harder. "I don't want to hear about the dream -"

"It wasn't a dream, Arizona. You died that night. You were coming home from dinner with Teddy, talking and laughing. She was driving, her Mazda. You were in the passenger seat. The oncoming car was a green pickup - it ran a red light and hit you from the right hand side, where you were sitting. You were mid laugh, telling Teddy a story about our morning, about how late I'd been.

"And the other driver was drunk. He kept his foot on the gas long after he'd hit your car. The glass scratched your face, a piece got stuck in the side of Teddy's head. The seatbelt yanked against your abdomen so hard it ruptured your liver. Your body filled with blood.

"It was Teddy who climbed out of the car and called the ambulance. She held your hand until the paramedics got there... Your left hand, though, because your right arm was so cut up with glass you were scared to move it - you told her you were scared to move it. You were conscious until they cut you out of the car, but you made Teddy take off your necklace before that. You didn't want them to cut the chain. She had it in her pocket."

She slides to the floor, tears now present on her face, too. She clasps a hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the sound of her sobs.

"The first time that night happened, they addressed your brain bleed first. Shepherd repaired the damage, but when they cut open your abdomen you were already bleeding out. They made a mistake that night, and you died on the table. 10:51 pm. It was Teddy who survived."

She swallows roughly, taking a deep breath before she speaks. "What do you mean, the first time?"

"The Memory Machine is real," I whisper.

She stands up quickly, startling me, unlocking the door before I can even think to stop her. She disappears into the hallway. I follow frantically, the door hinges creaking as I throw it open, the knob loudly hitting the wall. I barely get two feet before I see her, frozen in place.

Senna stands in front of her.

I approach carefully, uncontrolled tears still marring my face, knowing Arizona is equally distraught. Knowing I couldn't do it, I didn't do it. I haven't made her believe and she's leaving me. We're over. All of this was for nothing.

Senna catches my eye, swallowing hard enough that I can see the bob of her throat even from five feet away. Arizona follows her gaze, seeing me behind them and flinching. Her face is swollen and red, sobs still echoing through her chest.

"You have to listen, Dr. Robbins," Senna says, voice quivering but full of that stubborn strength I've watched her exhibit all day. The daughter of a scientist. A girl who doesn't know how to give up.

Arizona shakes her head, trying to turn away from both of us.

"I heard," Senna continues, "All of it. The accident, the machine... That you believe what they said about my father on the news. They were wrong, Dr. Robbins. He lied to them."

Arizona takes a step back from Senna, closer to me. "I read every article, Dr. Hamilton. I watched the whole process and read every retraction. I know he lied."

Senna shakes her head, fervent. "He lied to the reporters, about it not being true. The machine exists. I can show it to you."

This time, it's me who takes a step backwards, a wave of relief washing over me with such force that it feels like the floor is pushing up against me and I'm tumbling away. Almost like the push of the needle, the tip away from reality and the dive into the past. The breath before reliving.

But I don't go anywhere. I remain in the hallway, staring at the daughter of the man who changed my life, the back of the head of the woman I risked everything for. The control has been placed in Arizona's hands; it's her decision where we go from here. Whether she leaves her crazy wife or believes her. Whether we follow Senna to the machine, or she walks away. Whether I go back to living without her.

Arizona nods her head.


	12. Multum in parvo

**Multum in parvo**

_Much in little_

"You followed us?" I ask softly, leaning against the old brick wall in the warehouse district as Senna fumbles with the padlock. Arizona stands several feet away, still shaking but angrily pulling away at every form of contact.

"You ran out," Senna grunts, pushing the key hard into the rusted lock. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

I take the key from her hand, twisting it with more force than she has yet. It clicks, popping open to reveal bright, untouched metal. It's been years since anyone's been here.

"He told me," she whispers, dropping her head.

"Well?" Arizona interrupts, surging forward with her arms crossed.

Senna unhooks the padlock from the chain, tugging the loops of rusted metal out of the door handle. She tugs the door open, gesturing for us to go inside.

I freeze in the entryway, breathing in wildly familiar smells: air chilled and dampened by cement; the rubber that he once told me was manufactured here, decades before he bought the building; the musty scent of rain pooling on the floor, growing mold. He's barely touched the place in this reality - the stairs aren't recovered like they were the last time I was here.

"He keeps it on the third floor," Senna directs, already taking the steps two at a time. Arizona follows close behind her, leaving me alone to count them slowly. Twenty four stairs; the number of days it had been since her death, the very first time I came here.

When I get to the third floor, Senna's already dragged a white sheet off the machine. It's a cruder hunk of metal than I remember, lacking all the sheen and finishings I've so associated it with (sticky, leather covered seat, polished metal, attached surgical tray). It looks wildly unimpressive.

Arizona scoffs. "Nice science experiment," she mutters, already turning to leave.

"Wait!" Senna interrupts, flicking switches. The machine hums to life. She tugs a paramedic's heart monitor from a bag beneath the chair, a small jar of clear liquid. "Everything's here," she swears. "You can try it."

"How do you -" I murmur, awestruck. She's younger than Dr. Lewis, fewer lines around her eyes, but she touches the equipment with the same ease he always did. She moves with it, understands it. She's used it before.

"My father taught me, a month before he got sick. He said... He told me that someone was going to need it, after he was gone. He said someone was coming back."

I step closer to it, running my hand along the lights poised above the chair, glowing a faint blue. How had he known? Had he used the machine, too? Had he made a change? Had his visits affected what he knew in his new reality, too?

"Does it hurt?" Arizona whispers, tentative.

"No," Senna and I say at the same time. I look to her, startled.

"It doesn't hurt," Senna continues. "It's like... floating away. In a really big, buoyant sea until finally you're exactly where you want to be again and everything's right there. You touch the person you're so desperately missing and it's like you've never been away from them."

Arizona steps closer, her eyes dancing over the machine almost wistfully.

"Where do you want to go?" Senna asks.

Just like Dr. Lewis had. _Where will you go, Callie? To the night I first told her I loved her._

"The last time I was with my brother, before he was deployed."

Arizona lowers herself into the chair, letting Senna attach the monitors to her heart. She slowly wraps the wires around her head, wispy blonde hairs curling around the reds and blues. Senna rips a syringe from a sealed package, pushing it into the jar with the clear liquid before pulling the plunger back. The syringe fills.

She swipes alcohol across the inner curve of Arizona's elbow and then pushes the needle into the vein. Slowly, the clear liquid disappears and we watch as Arizona's bright blue eyes tip backwards into her skull.

I release a breath I didn't know I was holding.

#

Arizona seems almost lifeless in the chair. It doesn't even look like she's dreaming: her eyelids don't flutter, her fingers don't twitch. If not for the incessant beeping of the heart monitor...

Senna looks to the watch on her wrist. "If she's going to convulse at all, she'll start soon. I only gave her enough for half an hour, it should be wearing off in the next few minutes."

I nod, standing up from my seated position in one of the wide window sills. "What do you need me to do?" I ask softly, my fingers shaking as Denia's face comes rushing back at me - that day I convulsed so severely she had to strap me to the chair, when Dr. Lewis told me it was almost time to say goodbye. I've seen people have seizures before, but this feels different. I'm not sure I can handle this.

"It's okay," Senna soothes, "I just need you to hold her hand. Just squeeze her hand and it'll help to bring her back. The touching - it releases endorphins, helps to stabilize..."

"He fixed that," I whisper. "Anti-depressants."

Senna smiles, dropping her gaze back to Arizona, her hands just starting to twitch.

I grab Arizona's other hand, squeezing tightly. She moans, her head pushing backwards into the chair at the same time her feet kick at the air. I flinch, trying not to turn away.

Senna throws an arm over Arizona's thighs, stilling her. "Talk to her," she tells me.

Like Denia did. _Welcome back, Dr. Torres. Shhh, it's okay._

I lean close to her. "It's okay, Arizona," I whisper, "You're okay. You're coming back."

Her jaw clenches, her legs kicking at the chair one more time before her eyes flutter open. She glances around, disoriented, until her eyes find mine.

And then she's crying, tears tumbling down her cheeks unabated. "I saw him," she chokes out, her voice scratching its way out of her inevitably dry throat. Senna pushes the mouth of a water bottle against her lips.

We give her a minute, both of us watching as she thirstily drinks from the bottle I had tucked in my bag. She lets Senna take it away, turning back to me, her hands grabbing at my jacket.

"I saw him, Callie," she murmurs. "I saw Tim, just like that day in the field. I hugged him. I felt... I felt him kiss my cheek. He was real, Callie."

I nod, forcefully swallowing past the lump in my throat.

"I believe you, Callie," she swears. "It's real."

#

Her fingers on my skin are like some distant memory, a slow burn that I can't fathom into reality. They ghost over my arms as a summer wind - all warmth and comfort. Like coming home; sitting on the beach and drinking sangrias and hearing her laughter louder than the crashing waves. Her eyes are the colour of the curl beneath them, the blue that swallows me as the water smacks against my chest, tossing me below the surface in a mess of limbs.

I'm drowning in her.

She presses an urgent kiss against my lips, tongue peeking out to swipe across my mouth. I open myself up to her, let her run her tongue along the backs of my teeth. My heart beats faster, my whole body entranced by her and the way her hands slip beneath my shirt, wandering up my spine towards my bra. She takes the eyes out of the hooks, my breasts falling from their constraints.

Her nails dig into the flesh of my hips, pulling me with her as she stumbles backwards through the doorway between our bedroom and our bathroom, pushing my shirt up to reveal my abdomen as soon as her heels hit the tile. Her hands leave my skin just long enough to flick the light switch, a warm glow filling the room. She stills, watching me, my own feet frozen in the doorway, my hands lifting my shirt over my head.

Her bottom lip disappears between her teeth when my bra hits the floor, my nipples tightening at the onslaught of cold air. I can feel her eyes dance across them as clearly as I tasted her breath and the sensation sends a rush through my stomach. It lands at the apex of my thighs in wet heat.

My hands wander to her hips, pulling her tight against my naked chest. We both groan as my breasts squish between our bodies, her own skin still hidden under her shirt. Moans are swallowed as our mouths reconnect, slower this time. Gentler. Less urgent.

She whimpers, tugging away from me to undo the buttons of her top; her sternum appearing first, then her abdominal muscles and, finally, the curves of her iliac crests. I set a thumb in the hollow above her hip joint as her shirt tumbles to our feet. She stands before me in her bra and a pair of pink underwear, her eyes silently pleading: _touch me, please touch me_.

My thigh slips between her legs instinctively, a fire erupting in my belly as she lowers herself to grind against it. The warmth of her center stills me, my mind racing backwards of its own accord - _kicking away the sheets and guiding her down on top of me, my leg bending upwards between hers. The instinctive grinding of her hips coating my skin with her wetness, eliciting a moan._ The personal emergency. Being very late for work.

I choke on the thoughts, stepping away from her in an attempt to right myself. To ground myself in the present, in the reality. Arizona is here. She loves me. She's not dead, she's not leaving. We're okay. _I'm_ okay.

Her eyes flutter open at the loss of friction, her bottom lip sucked into her mouth. "Take off your pants," she murmurs. She disappears into the shower stall, her bra and panties tossed out behind her. The water turns on, filling the bathroom with the sounds of an artificial downpour. A summer storm.

I push my yoga pants quickly down my legs, kicking my feet out of them and my underwear all at once so I can follow her. She presses herself against me as soon as I step in, pushing me back against the glass and burying her tongue in my mouth. She nips at my lips, jutting her chin forward to apply an extra pressure. The sensation makes me weak in the knees.

"I missed you so much," I whisper, my voice falling back into my throat as she slides one of her fingers through my folds.

"I missed you, too," she answers, "I'm so glad you're back."

"Me too," I murmur, my focus drifting as she rubs circles around my clitoris. "Me, too."


	13. Non semper erit aestas

**Non semper erit aestas**

_It will not always be Summer_

She stirs beside me, groaning as her legs push against the mattress beneath us. I notice the sensitive twist of her hips, her joints stiffened and cramping much like my own. I giggle as her knee pops noisily, gases escaping from between the bones.

"Not funny," she murmurs sleepily, rolling over and burying her face between the pillow and my shoulder.

"You're getting old," I whisper, pressing a kiss against her temple.

She huffs, lifting her head to stare me down. "If I'm old, then so are you."

I nod, leaning forward to capture her lips with my own. "We're old together," I concede, the breathy lightness of my voice making her soften. She collapses back into me, throwing an arm over my torso and resting her head on my shoulder.

I stare up at the ceiling. I can still taste her on my tongue; the salty sweat of her skin, the sweet curl of her release, the hot flush of her breath between my lips. A night of passion has made her even more poignant to my senses, louder in my head than in any instance in the machine. She'd been disappearing from my memory - though I knew the tenses of her muscles before orgasm, there'd been something lacking. I'd forgotten the tastes of her, the smells.

She rubs a gentle circle around my stomach, drawing my attention to her. "What are you thinking?" she asks softly, blue eyes dancing across my face with worried expression. There's a fearful tremble to her lower lip, a sight I witnessed last night in the on call room. We're both still afraid of what could be: her, of my mind tipping wayward and once again falling victim to the 'dreams'; me, of her wounded heart making her leave me, the nagging voice that tells me she should be dead; we're both terrified of being apart.

"I'm just thinking how different this is," I tell her, a single finger tracing a path along her jaw in an effort to keep her grounded, close to me. "When I was with you in the machine, it was enough. Reliving every moment with you was enough. I never even... I didn't realize that it could never be as a great as the real thing.

"I couldn't go back," I whisper, kissing her head again, "Not after having had the real thing. You're better than any memory."

She closes her eyes, her throat clearing softly. "Are you mad," she asks, "at me?"

I shake my head, confusion furrowing my brow.

"You never gave up on me, Callie. You spent the last three months coming back to me, no matter what the cost. You risked everything for one more chance. But I... I was giving up on you. I was going to leave you because I couldn't keep going through the accident, I couldn't keep telling you that I was alive and it was Teddy who'd died. I was going to leave you because neither of us could accept the reality of the worst night of my life." She chokes back a sob, swallowing roughly.

It was the worst night of my life, too.

"I'm not mad at you," I swear. "I could never be. I feel like I've been waiting my whole life just to be here with you, right now, in this moment." My eyes shift to the ceiling, afraid to look at her as I ask her the same thing: "Are you mad at me?"

But I don't get to mention fate or the laws of time travel or that I truly believe Teddy's death is my fault because suddenly her lips are on mine swearing that she isn't and her tongue is pushing its way into my mouth promising that she's not and her hands are beneath my top fighting for our happiness and our whole conversation is being tossed over the side of the bed. Because we're better just together. We're better with fingers in hair and tongues in cheeks and hips thrusting roughly in a search for friction. We solve problems with orgasms, no matter how unhealthy it could be.

No matter how happy I am right now; no matter if I hate myself for the fates I've altered.

#

Yet again, I stumble back into the hospital as though nothing has changed. As if three months haven't passed. As if a resident hasn't left the program, the machine hasn't existed, as if I haven't saved a life at the cost of another. The hospital is a constant flow of patients, of charts, of cases. Surgery is just as it has always been.

It's the repetition that gets me through the day.

Scrub. Slice. Suction.

Saw. Sutures.

Silence.

It fills my head quickly, drips through my veins and chills my fingers. Lifts my focus from the chart I'm reading and sends me running in the opposite direction I ran last night. Down the stairs, across the floor, to room 318A where someone yells code blue.

The thump of the defibrillator, his chest heaving upwards with the surge. The screeching of the heart monitor, yelling out the flat line of his heart. Charge to 200. Charge to 300. Clear. Clear. Clear.

Time of death, 3:18pm. Room 318A.

Senna turns from where she stands at the sliding glass door, tears already soaked into her cheeks. Red rimmed eyes and shaking hands and gasping breath.

"He's dead," she says, the revelation pulling a sob from her chest.

Denia appears around the corner, a vase of flowers in her hands. She pauses when she sees her sister, understanding hits her like a freight train. It knocks the vase from her hands, glass shattering across the linoleum, flowers spilling from their arrangement.

She rushes forward, grabbing for Senna, tucking her into her arms as they both lower to the floor. They fit together like puzzle pieces, as small as children clutching to the reality that their father is gone. Two dead.

And it's all my fault.

I look to the flowers lying amongst the glass on the floor: pink gardenias, yellow senna flowers, a single, red rose. And tucked within them, a spattering of stars of Bethlehem, stark white against their counterparts. His favourite flower, he'd told me once, the flower that stood for reconciliation.

Like purple begonias could line the path to the hospital and scream, 'beware'.


	14. Omnia cause fiunt

**Omnia causa fiunt**

_Everything happens for a reason_

No one talks about what they do with the body once the machines have been turned off, the screeching flat line silenced, the intubation tube removed. The body goes still, cold, and the whole world turns away. A nurse pulls a sheet over the face and it's like the person never existed.

Dr. Lewis' body is taken from the room on a gurney, blanket covering every inch of him. They push it down the hall to an elevator that isn't used for living patients; transport him to the hospital morgue. There is no grand show to the action, more a stiff following of procedure. They tuck him away and the elevator doors close and he really, really stops existing.

He's just dead.

I stand in his room alone. Nurses have rushed off to another pressing matter, a custodian will arrive soon to disinfect everything. Mop the floor. Tuck new sheets around the plastic mattress so someone else can take up residence in room 318A.

It's a date, the number of his room. The time he was pronounced dead. March 18th. It was an important number, even before he was admitted. Long before they charged the defibrillator. March 18th was a day for celebrating, tequila and birthday cake and girls' night. A night for Arizona and her best work friend to go wild, be stupid, rejoice in the fact that they'd made it through another year.

Teddy's birthday was March 18th.

But she'd died before her birthday this year, almost a week to the day. Bleeding out slowly in her brain and terribly alone. Thinking that the accident was her fault, that Arizona was hurt because of something she'd done.

Until a nurse had covered her with a sheet. Until they'd rolled her on a gurney to an elevator tucked into a corner of the hospital. Until she'd been put inside a body bag in the hospital morgue, waiting for someone to come and claim her.

She'd just stopped existing.

It had been different, the night Arizona died. She hadn't been left alone. Bailey had been meticulous, carefully sewing her abdomen closed and slowly wiping the blood from her skin. She'd been treated like a living person, even as she'd been transported to the morgue. Bailey had stood vigil outside the door, whispering prayers beneath her breath.

But I don't even know if a group of residents stood by in silent respect as Teddy was rolled down the hall. I have no idea if someone held her hand beneath the sheet. If she was carried from the world with the weight of guilt that had stooped Bailey's shoulders when it was Arizona in the body bag.

She should've existed. There never should've been a mistake so catastrophic.

Even if someone had to die that night.

I'd known that; I knew that. Dr. Lewis had said it before, I'd read it in the articles. It was his response anytime a reporter questioned his belief in time travel. There was no such thing as time travel, only time reassignment. You couldn't go back and change one thing and have the world be exactly as it was before. The changes made layers, created new realities upon which your life existed.

But the fates stayed. The death in that car accident had to remain present. The result of that night had to keep pressing its way into reality. The driver of the other car still had to be charged; he still had to serve time in jail for driving drunk that rainy night in Seattle. There still had to be a mistake in the hospital that turned him into a murderer. Someone always had to die.

The laws of time are not something to be altered.

The laws of time are what send a promising young surgeon running home over a simple mistake. They're what put an amazing surgeon in a grave, even though she died in the safety net of antiseptic. They're what place an inventor in your life and destroy his liver before you can even tell him what you've done.

And then I realize that's my biggest regret; that I'll never get to tell him what he made. What his machine was capable of. It was so much more than a tattoo or a mother's kiss. The Memory Machine was more powerful than he ever got to know.

Senna stumbles into the room with a box of Kleenex, whipping it roughly against the wall and startling me from my reverie. Her eyes are red, mascara smudged into dark circles in the hollow sockets of her face. "This wasn't supposed to happen," she swears, her hands balling into tight fists.

I nod a silent agreement, lowering to the slightly dented Kleenex box lying on the floor. I pull a tissue free, wiping at the tears still rolling slowly down my face. None of this was ever supposed to happen.

"He wrote about it," she tells me, tugging roughly at her hair. "He wrote about all of it - everything he put into that fucking machine. He left my mother because of it, left us all alone. And then he came back, and you know why? Because he had cancer. Because he had fucking cancer and he wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he was sorry he'd let the machine take his life. And now he's dead! My father is dead!

"I spent a lifetime trying to explain to my sister that our father wasn't some fairytale. That what she remembered of him was warped, that being three made it easier to think of him as a superhero. But he wasn't anything more than a coward. He was just a man who kissed my mom and taught me how to use his stupid invention and then told us all that he was sick.

"My father was always dead," she spits. "I don't know why all of this is so hard, now."

I shrug, unsure of what to give to her. What to say to make any of this okay. "It's real now. He can't come back anymore." He can never come back.

"Neither can my mom," she whispers, dropping her head. "I had them both and now I have neither of them."

I choke on the lump in my throat, coughing suddenly. Coughing too loudly. It feels rough and out of place, breaking our moment.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, a wall slipping back up, "I'm being unprofessional."

"It's okay," I swear, but it's already too late. A mask slips over her face, her own sheet. Senna's very existence has faltered.

Just another thing that's all my fault.

#

I put my surgeries on hold for the day, too shaken even to walk through scrubbing procedures, never mind setting a break. I slug hammers at discarded casting, shattering the pieces.

I feel shattered.

I try to find Arizona, but the operating board tells me she's in a lengthy surgery. That I won't be able to find comfort in her for several more hours. So I tuck myself away in the cafeteria, slumped over at a table in the corner, poking at a slice of chocolate cake.

That's where Denia finds me, a stack of journals in her hands instead of a vase. "Dr. Torres?" she asks, just as tentative and soft as she was before. She's a willowy girl, tall and thin, posture impeccable. Like a ballerina, or a flower stem. Hard to break. Harder to fix.

I nod, my voice caught in the lump I've yet to shake free.

She lowers herself into a seat slowly, notebooks set carefully on the table in front of her. "I'm Gardenia Hamilton," she says, "We met yesterday? Outside my father's room? My sister is Senna Hamilton, one of the residents here?"

I nod again. I know exactly who she is, though I'd never admit it to her; that I know the soft stretch of her smile, the darting of her eyes when she feels pressured, the delicate curl of her voice. I know the sure way she once moved her hands, once touched a piece of equipment so powerful it turned dreamers into killers.

"Denia," I whisper.

She nods emphatically, shuffling forward on her chair.

But I want to scream. I want to throw chairs and curse the heavens and tell her just how sorry I am that her father's dead. I want her angry, miserable, like Senna was. Not emphatic. Not excited. She's supposed to be hating me.

"I've read about you," she says.

I balk, thoughts pausing and whipping backwards .

And she reads it in my eyes. "My father kept journals. He wrote of a Dr. C. Torres, but it didn't even click -"

"Your father's dead."

She stills, a single finger scratching at the surface of one of the leather bound books. "I know," she murmurs, drooping slightly. "He's dead in this reality."

The lump lifts, the weight in my throat tipping outwards onto my shoulders. "This reality?" I ask, my hand twitching where it's dropped into my lap.

"The layers," she says, flipping open the first book. "He wrote that time travel was more of a reassignment process - a way to create layer upon layer of reality. In this layer, my father is dead, but in another he still exists."

I shake my head, pushing away from the table.

"Please," she begs, reaching out in an effort to stop me. Her middle finger grazes my skin, scratches a pale line down my arm. "He said there were dreams, glimpses into the other layers. And Senna... Senna said you came from somewhere else. So, are they real? Have you seen another layer?

"Is my father still alive, somewhere?"


	15. Quod me nutrit me destruit

**Quod me nutrit me destruit**

_What nourishes me also destroys me_

My head spins, nausea as angry in the pit of my stomach as I can remember before. Driving home. On top of chop suey. In a bar bathroom, in garbage cans, heaving over toilets. The before that still wraps around me with such an iron fist.

His face is as clear inside my head as it was sitting in the chair, his hand resting above my heart, asking softly if I was ready. Telling me he'd made extraordinary things possible.

He'd done extraordinary things. It says so, in the pages of his journal. The very reason he created the machine. The reason he has two living, breathing daughters. One with a medical doctorate and a promising future, the other sitting in front of me and begging for a truth I don't know how to give.

And I can see it in her face, the dreaming. The beginning of a plan. A single change, a jump to another reality, a chance to try again. She's not thinking of the guilt. She's not thinking of the consequences. She's too young, too naive. She's not the girl I knew, who sat beside the machine and squeezed my hand back to reality and cried every time she turned away.

Gardenia in my reality was a nurse. She was the one who followed in her father's footsteps, who dedicated her life to saving people.

But here, she grew up as a dreamer. Without her father, but delicately handed him a few years too late, had him wrenched away by a cancer that was already destroying him. Lost her mother.

She's a florist, like the woman he speaks of in the journals. The attachment to the perfect arrangement, the meanings behind every petal, the nicks in the pads of her fingers undoubtedly caught in the path of her tools. She is her mother in this reality; not her father.

Not the Denia I knew.

"You can't," I whisper. "You can't use the machine. You can't go make a change and try to save him." I choke on bile pushing its way up my throat, my stomach heaving even though I'm trying desperately to swallow it down. Someone will die. Someone will always die.

Vomit spills from my mouth, making her jump back from her seat. I spit the taste away, tears already pooling in my eyes, already feeling my emotions pull me from the present. Like the machine did. The machine let my emotions take control, let me lose all sense of grounding. Let me forget where I was, what was happening.

Until Arizona is right beside me, tugging me to my feet. Dragging me through the doorway of the cafeteria and into a bathroom across the hall. She locks the door, pulls my scrub top right over my head and then my pants down my legs and shoves them both inside the garbage can. She brings a paper towel to my face, cool wetness wiping me clean of the remnants of my stomach.

"What happened?" she asks softly, knowing me. Knowing me so completely. Because somewhere beneath everything, she is still the person I know. Still the woman who combed vomit from my hair before, saw me spill my guts in throes of anxiety.

Anxiety like this. Because someone always has to die.

"He's dead," I say, tears finally morphing into a sob. And she tucks me into her like Denia and Senna - two puzzle pieces designed to make a whole. My other half. My destiny. "Everyone is dead."

#

"This isn't healthy," she whispers, wiping sweat from my forehead with a moist cloth. She strokes at my hair, damp and splayed across her lap. My head lays on her thigh, the rest of me curled into a ball on our bathroom floor.

The pain has yet to let up, nausea still rippling across my head with the strength of a jackhammer. It's emptied my gut and warmed my skin, coating me in a layer of sweat.

But she hasn't left my side. At the hospital, she held my hair and changed my clothes; walked me across the street and into the safety of our apartment. She's given me water and crackers, pulled my curls off my face as I heaved over the toilet.

"You're perfect," I murmur softly, thumb scratching at the seam along the side of her jeans. She blows a puff of air out her nose, a disbelieving little laugh. "Thank you," I continue, "for staying with me." I still, aware of the depth of that simple phrase. More than just in sickness and in health.

Arizona stays silent for a moment, slowly twisting my hair into a braid. When she speaks again, her voice is soft, tentative. "What else did he say in the journal?"

I sigh, rolling onto my back so I can look right at her. Blue eyes catch mine, shimmering behind a sea of unshed tears. "What's wrong?" I ask, sitting up slowly (and praying to the heavens that the slight movement won't toss another wave of nausea my way). I push her blonde hair behind her ears, studying her face. The tears escape, trickling slowly down her cheeks - left then right. I catch them with my thumbs.

She shakes her head, fruitlessly attempting to whip the wetness from her eyes. "The effects, Callie..." She trails off, a gentle sob slipping past her lips before she clamps them shut.

But I didn't see enough of the book to tell her more. I didn't get to flip through all the pages, read all of Dr. Lewis' story. I just know what I've told her, what he wrote about the effects the machine had on him. The cancer; how it destroyed his liver, coughing up blood and migraine headaches and dreams of different realities that swirled inside his head whether he was asleep or awake.

"What if these are your effects?" she whimpers around her tears, "What if this is you getting sick?"

"Shh, shh," I soothe, stroking her cheeks. "I'd take this a million times over if it means I get to be with you."

She softens slightly, leaning into my chest. But I swear I hear her whisper: "What if I don't want you to?"


	16. Causa latet, vis est notissima

**Causa latet, vis est notissima**

_The cause is hidden, but the result is well known_

"Callie," she whispers, stroking hair off my forehead. My skin has cooled, the sweat of fever chilling while I slept. But the sun is shining now, bright rays bursting in from around the edges of the curtains, and she is lying beside me in our bed. Blonde hair glowing in the morning light and bright blue eyes dancing across my face and it feels like falling in love with her all over again.

I can't help but smile.

"Good morning," she murmurs, her hand stroking down my cheek. "Are you feeling better?"

I don't want to break this spell she's got me under. I don't want to do anything except look at her; beautiful Arizona in all her glory. The creases around her eyes, the curve of her mouth. I want to kiss trails down the sharp path of her mandible, lose my tongue in the hollow above her clavicle.

I roll us over, pinning her beneath me. She laughs, letting my hands wind into her curls. "I love you," I promise, lowering my mouth to press against hers. And everything is right again: just her and I, here, in this moment.

#

"Dr. Hamilton!" Arizona calls as soon as she spots Senna on the pathway ahead of us. There's a surge of people around us, the beginning of the morning shift at the hospital, but Senna stops at the sound of her voice, turning to greet us cheerfully.

"Good morning, Dr. Robbins. Dr. Torres, how are you feeling today?"

I flush self consciously, tugging Arizona's hand in front of my body. "Much better, thank you."

Arizona squeezes my fingers, attention shifting to my face. "Why don't you go on ahead, Calliope?" she whispers, kissing my cheek softly. "I'll see you for lunch, okay?"

And if it had been a different time, I would have understood walking away from Arizona so she could talk to a resident. I would not have been worried about whether or not I'd see her at lunch. Even if today feels different - better, somehow - there's a rush of insecurity that fills my chest as I stumble towards the hospital doors. There's no time to dwell on it, though, when there are rounds to complete and residents to teach and surgeries to perform.

My day fills with bones, casting, charts. By noon I've completely forgotten how it felt to leave her side. Instead, I'm strolling to the doctor's lounge to meet her and thinking about kissing her lips and holding her hand and reminding her just how much she means to me.

But the sight of her, hunched over a table reading, sends it all rushing back. I recognize the leather bound journals, the tight lines of handwritten passages. I feel his presence in the room as irrevocable as hers. "What are you doing?" I ask softly.

She looks up, startled, her face paling.

"Those are his..." I continue, my arms crossing over my chest.

"Callie -" she tries to begin.

"What are you doing, Arizona?"

She shakes her head, standing and stepping closer. She reaches a hand out to touch me and instinctively I pull away. Because this is wrong. This all feels really, really wrong.

"I asked Senna for his journals. I had to... I had to read what he wrote, Callie. About the effects of the machine. I had to know. I had to be sure that you'd be okay..."

I still, my hands dropping to my sides. The look on her face, the tip of her brows, is enough to make me want to tuck her under the curve of my arms and run screaming from the room all at once.

"Arizona -" I beg.

"I think... I think we should run some tests."

And so we do; a needle pushed into my vein, a syringe filled with blood. The tourniquet pinches at my skin, holding me roughly to this piece of reality I do not want. To the reality of an answer I'm not desperate to search for.

But she is. She needs to know, needs to see.

I know the truth in my heart before it's ever written on the page, as truthful in my mind as patients who know it's cancer the minute they walk through emergency room doors. I know the ache within me as inexplicably as I know her eyes, her breath. I know the look before I ever touch the page.

Then it's all in dark ink, beneath my fingertips. Permanent, unquestionable. The printed proof of what is already happening in my body. What lies ahead.

She lowers herself into a chair beside me, shivering. More shaken than I, who expected the awful truth of this. Who never wanted the certainty. It is she who is uncertain now, unprepared for this hurdle placed in our path.

Maybe we can jump it - for a time - or maybe it can destroy us. Destroy me.

"Callie," she whispers.

"Don't," I plead, "I don't - I can't - hear it. Don't say it out loud."

"The journals -" she tries again, but that's a thousand times worse and suddenly I feel like I'm suffocating from the weight of two different lives. Two lives that could never be the perfect I searched so desperately for. The forever we so rightfully deserved.

The tears start unabated, rolling down my cheeks of their own accord. Dripping off my chin, slapping loudly against the paper in my hands.

She drops to her knees in front of me, tugged from her own emotional reverie. "Oh, Callie," she murmurs, pulling me into her arms.

But she can't fix it now; the machine has done its damage. I have done mine.

#

It's hours later, in the safety net of our apartment, before she tries again. "The journals..." she says, her voice strong. I sense the quiver beneath the surface, the clenching of her diaphragm as she desperately tries to keep it together. "He wrote about the other layers, Callie. About being healthy in the first one, where he hadn't made a change."

I shrug, focused on the vegetables I'm cutting. Clinging to some semblance of our former normalcy - making dinner in the kitchen, eating on the couch, crawling into bed and making love in the moonlight. I need that back, I need all of it back. I need this to be okay.

But she says the words that take it all away. Again. "I think you should go back, Callie."

The knife tumbles from my hand, clattering loudly on the counter before skittering off and to the floor. "Don't you dare," I choke out, the tears starting anew. Even now, a whole lifetime away from where this all began, my emotions escape from me like a leaky faucet. I can't turn it off, I can't stop the drip. I feel a wreck; a mess.

"Don't you dare say that to me like it is easy, Arizona. You have no idea. You have absolutely no idea what it was..." My voice cracks, more tears tumbling free. I swipe at my cheeks angrily, craving the haughty indifference I was once capable of. Before all of this. Before love and accidents and rain.

"You think this is easy for me?" she sobs. It turns me on the spot, finally taking her in, startled by the tears already pouring down her face, too. "Calliope, you _know_. You know what it was like to-" She bends, gasping for air. "Don't make me go through that, too. Don't make me watch this happen to you." She rights herself, staring me down. The strength has returned, the quiver pushed far below her surface. "You can... you can go back, to before. You can be healthy and you can do good and we can..."

"I'll never see you again."

Another sob wracks through her, sharp and loud. I can't ignore it, can't ignore her. The red-rim of her blue eyes, the puff of her cheeks. This is killing her, too. This is killing us both. "We can have our memories."

I shake my head. "I only want you, Arizona."


	17. Una in perpetuum

**Una in perpetuum**

_Together forever_

She wraps herself in my arms and it's purer somehow when we're intertwined. I can smell her tears, the salt on her skin. Somewhere, deep inside, I know she's right. Even if it kills me, kills us both, she's right.

She tucks her head against my chest, still sniffling. "Tonight you're here," she murmurs into the swell of my breast, her lips poised above my beating heart. "Tonight it's just us, together. _Here_."

"Tonight," I echo. Tonight we can still pretend we have forever.

She leads the way from the kitchen, guiding us backwards with her mouth on mine. Her fingers toy with the hairs at the nape of my neck, twisting them into spiral curls. I peruse her frame, slipping my hands beneath the hem of her shirt, index finger counting slowly up the vertebrae of her spine. Lumbar, then thoracic. I'm just beginning on the cervical when the backs of my knees hit the bed frame.

And just like that, a switch flips between us. The trembling emotions of the past few days are pushed aside, abandoned for the desire of skin. And I want hers against mine _right now_.

We fall onto the sheets, a whirlwind of hands, a cascade of heat. I feel her move above me and I'm torn momentarily, struggling between wanting to hold her here like this and wanting to feel her inside me. Wanting to feel her inhabiting as much of me as she can. She calls my name, her voice quivering between desire and intimacy as much as I'm sure mine would.

One of us chooses to give in, my shirt ripped from my body. My bra falls from my chest, unhooked at some point. Her shirt joins mine, tossed haphazardly behind us to settle somewhere on our bedroom floor. I find the clasp of her bra and flick it open, her breasts falling free above me.

I lean forward, wrapping my mouth around one tightened nipple. She tosses her head backwards, moaning loudly at the contact. But her hands are steady, working the button of my jeans in the limited space between our bodies. When I switch sides on her chest, swirling her other areola with my tongue, she's already pushing denim down my body. I lift my hips in acquiescence, egging her on.

She pulls my underwear off at the same time, lowering herself back onto me as I kick the offending objects away. Her hips roll against mine, grinding the warmth of her center into me. I can feel the heat of her, radiating through the thin material of her leggings.

"Off," I beg, coherence lost somewhere in the rush of her touch.

She lifts herself from me, a groan escaping my lips of its own accord. But then she's back, and she's naked, and there's more fervor to her actions than before. Her hands are everywhere, tangling in my hair, kneading at my breasts, squeezing the flesh above my hips. She kisses all the places she can reach - tongue swirling in my belly button, teeth nipping at my beating pulse.

The first touch of her fingertips to my clit is like an electric shock, startling me into action and reminding my body of what my mind already knows. I bite at every inch of skin I can find, sucking marks onto her shoulders, her arms. I want her to be tattooed by me wherever she goes. Wherever _I_ go.

Her hand slips lower and lower until she's inside me, fingers curling along my walls. A moan rips through me and it's all I can do to bury my face in the curve of her neck. Arizona's free hand wraps around my waist, holding me to her. I grind against her pelvis instinctively, my release approaching faster with every twist of her fingers.

I press my nose into the dip of her collarbone, my senses overwhelmed by her: her hair curtaining my face, the scent of coconut shampoo still lingering and mixing with our sweat, her voice encouraging me, an impossible combination of soft and strong, gentle and demanding. My tongue flicks out to taste her skin; my hands settle on her breasts.

The orgasm hits me suddenly, far earlier than I would like. I reach my crescendo at full speed, screaming her name, falling from the edge in the only place I ever want to be - here, in her arms. The world goes wayward for a moment, dizziness enveloping me like a starlit sky. The universe wrapping around me in waves of pleasure.

When my breathing slows, I seek out her sex, my fingers slipping into the space between us with a practiced ease. The warm wetness that meets my hand is nothing short of a moonlit fountain, an oasis in the desert. A million butterflies tickling over my skin and a thousand nights just like this one. I will never love another as I love her, I know that inexplicably.

I slide down her body, taking my time to memorize every rise and fall, every freckle, every scar. I trace the hollow of her belly button, count the ribs above her racing heart and heaving lungs, lick the curves of her iliac crests. I study it all, memorizing. Re-memorizing. Every perfect imperfection, every piece that makes her who she is. _My Arizona_.

With the first suck of her clit, my mouth fills with sweetness. With softness, with smoothness. With strength and with passion and - my God - with so, so much love. My mouth fills with _her_ \- everything I remember and then some. The Arizona who stole my heart. The woman I married, who swore to me that she'd be at my side for a lifetime. Even if it was cut short.

Even if death did we part.

Her legs wrap around my head and once again I'm surrounded by her, filled with her. Her moans a symphony, my tongue the conductor's baton. I am creating my masterpiece, my final work. I lick inside of her as far as I can reach, and when I feel her hips jump into my face, I bring one hand to her clit. I rub it in slow circles, then fast, then slow, pushing her to the brink and then teasing her back.

She chants my name like a mantra, louder and louder until she explodes into the most glorious pleasure I've ever seen. Arizona is all I can smell, all I can taste as I lick her clean.

She's all I can feel as she pulls me back up, into her arms.

"I love you," I tell her over and over, and she's saying it, too: our two voices fitting into the spaces we make for each other. Just like our bodies.

Just like our hearts.

#

Hours later, we lie still. Not sated, but at peace; calm. No amount of Arizona is ever going to be enough, I realize. Not when tonight is _tonight_ and tomorrow...

Our legs tangle together, each of us ending where the other begins. We are one in this moment, and I plead with the universe to let me feel like this forever. To never take this away from me again.

Arizona's breathing is steady, but I can't follow her into sleep. I can't miss one minute of tonight, one second of being here like this. I burrow into her and she stirs, nuzzling her cheek against my head. My eyes feel heavy, but I fight to keep them open.

In the distance, thunder rumbles, the beginnings of a storm creeping in. I listen as rain softly falls from the sky, splattering against our bedroom window. It picks up quickly, the soft pitter-patter making room for a sideways downpour . It pelts the building loudly, echoing through our quiet, darkened space.

Dimly, I feel a droplet of water on my neck. It takes me a moment to realize it's not the rain leaking through our ceiling, but a tear.

I don't know which of us it came from.

#

The morning is as dark as I feel, the weather still mirroring our emotions. Like the universe is mourning what lies ahead as much as we are.

But _God_ , I've barely even thought about it. Barely even registered what she's asking me to do. It's so easy, to just follow her lead. To let her be the guiding force of my life, just like before.

I simply stand by in wait as she makes pancakes neither of us can choke down. Watch as she dumps them in the garbage can with shaking hands, slams the lid shut in frustration.

"I called Senna," she finally says. "She'll meet us there."

And then it hits me and suddenly I'm crying and my legs are giving out and I'm reaching for her all in one instant. We lower to the kitchen floor, wrapped together, both of us sobbing out a grief we gave ourselves. Because she's asking me to say goodbye to her again, asking me to face a life without her. It isn't fair - none of it is fair.

"I love you, Callie," she promises, kissing wherever she can reach. My shoulders, my neck, my jaw, my hair. I commit to memory the feel of her mouth on me, the scrape of her teeth and the flick of her tongue and the pressure of her lips.

I can't forget a single thing, a single second. Not this time. Not ever.

"I don't want to go," I manage somehow, my words book ended by the quivering of my jaw, squeezing her tighter. "I don't want to live without you, not again."

She takes a shuddering breath, pulling away so she can look me in the eye. "Calliope..." her voice catches and she swallows roughly before trying again. "You did this, you came here... So you could save me. You _saved_ me. You reminded me what it feels like to love, and you gave us these last few days. You gave us a bit more time just to be together. To just be in love." She shudders, more tears spilling over her lower lashes. "Let me... Let me save you, now. Let me give you a little bit more time."

We don't know what lies ahead. We don't know what this layer will look like, once I go back. If I'll still exist here, if it'll be like before with the dreams and the confusion and the losing her. If I'll die, like Dr. Lewis and his cancer. If this whole layer will simply cease to exist, as if I was never here. As if there was never an instance where she survived the accident.

The fear pours over me, worse than a thousand times in that on call room. Worse than seeing Mark outside that door. Worse than watching from the gallery as she flat lined, as Derek Shepherd called time of death. This fear, this uncertainty, is not something I think I can face.

She tucks me in against her chest, my ear right above where her heart beats. Steady.

"Please don't make me do this," I whimper. "Please don't make me leave you."

She sighs, stroking my hair. Her hands drift down my back, rubbing gentle circles. "He talked a lot about fate in the journals, Callie. About the cost of meddling."

I lift my head, meeting her eyes.

"The ripples, he said, of destinies... They carry over. They transfer."

I nod. _Teddy_. "The car accident," I murmur.

"It was my fate, Callie."

Her death.

"And then -" She shakes her head, swiping at another tears as it dribbles down her cheek. "Even if you tried again... Even if you saved Teddy..."

It hits me square in the chest, knocking the breath from my lungs. "Someone will always die."

She reaches for my hand, clasping it between both of her own. "We can't, Callie. You said... you said you were the last. We have to end this. And - and... the machine, Callie, it's made you... We have to..." Her voice wavers, chest heaving as she fights against more tears. "We have to put our faith in our destinies. Whatever they may be, we have to believe that what happens is what is meant to happen."

I nod, leaning forward. She meets me in the middle, our foreheads pressed together. I stare into her eyes, brimming with tears. I wipe them away with my thumbs.

None of this is easy; it was never meant to be.


	18. Illis quos amo deserviam

**Illis quos amo deserviam**

_For those I love I will sacrifice_

Senna flicks the machine to life, it's gentle whir filling the floor. She leads Arizona through the procedure one last time, the needles laid out in order on the tray, before she slips from the room. Left alone, we stare at each other.

"Are you ready?" Arizona asks softly.

I shake my head. How can I possibly be ready for this? "I just..." The words catch in my throat. "I just need to look at you for one more minute." I cradle her head between my hands, watching as tears pool in her eyes. "I love you," I promise, "I will always love you. No matter what happens. No matter what it looks like here, after I'm gone. I love you, always. I love you forever, in every layer, every part of me. You will always be the love of my life."

Tears spill over, tumbling down her cheeks. "I love you, Calliope. I love you no matter what happens, no matter where we are. You're the love of my life, too."

I kiss her softly, slowly. A tingle sparks at the bottom of my spine, dancing up my back, flushing my cheeks. The excitement of kissing her - a feeling I vow to never forget. We pull apart reluctantly, our foreheads set together. Desperate to stay connected as long as we possibly can.

"It's time," she mumbles.

And still, I'm not ready. We had our whole future planned out: a house, and kids. Pets. Growing old together, making an impact in our fields of medicine. A life three times longer than the one we got.

"Our first child," I whisper, "What would we have named her?"

A tentative smile breaks across her face. "Who says we'd have a girl first?"

A giggle bursts from my mouth, bubbling free with a couple more tears.

"Our daughter would've been Sofia."

"And our son?"

She thinks for a minute, eyes drifting upward. "Garner?"

"Reid."

"Mateo." She laughs, a wider smile filling her face. "We would've figured it out."

My eyes drop from hers. She lifts a hand, running it gently down my cheek. When she reaches my chin she uses a single finger to guide my gaze back to her own. "It would've been amazing," she swears. "We were amazing."

I swallow, a lump blocking my throat. More tears spill over, drippy faucet that I've become.

"Don't cry," she pleads, wiping the tears away with her thumbs. "Don't be sad anymore. Just be you, be my rock star. Be _happy_."

"I love you, Arizona."

"Don't wallow, when you go back. Try to... keep living."

I will. I'll try. I nod.

"I love you, too."

We slowly let each other go and I ease into the chair, rolling up my sleeve. She sets a needle against my forearm, focused. But I need her to see me. I need her to look me in the eyes. I grab her other hand, startling her.

"I love you," I say again.

She squeezes my hand. "I love you, too, Calliope."

I pull her fingers to my mouth, pressing kisses into her knuckles. "Goodbye, Arizona," I whisper.

"Sweet dreams." She lowers her mouth to my forehead. My eyes close, and for the first time... I'm not afraid. My heart isn't pounding out of my chest, my thoughts aren't running circles in my head. The world feels almost... calm; at peace.

The needle plunges into my vein, my vision wavers, my head spins, and then I hear her voice. Somewhere far away, swearing that she loves me, over and over and over.

The rush is startling; tipping me backwards so fast I think I'm going to be sick. There's the hum and the darkness and then my eyes flutter open and I'm right back at the beginning. I roll off the bed, fumbling across the room for the light switch. I don't even manage to flick it on before the pounding begins and Mark's on the other side calling my name and I have to do this _one last time_.

I take a deep breath, steeling myself for the hours ahead. The blood. The hurt.

And then I throw open the door and I'm leaping headfirst into it all. Full speed down the hallway, hot on Mark's heels. The thumping of our feet reminds me that this is real.

That it's almost over.

Alex heaves over the garbage can, contents of his stomach hitting the bottom noisily. The smell wafts, the first time I've ever noticed it, and my nose crinkles. I turn away from him, towards Kepner and her shaking hands. The ultrasound is clutched in her fists and it takes everything in me not to rip it from her fingers and try again. Do it right this time.

The gurney passes in front of me, blocking my path. Meredith hollers stats I can recite by heart. Arizona's blood pressure starts to drop, the O.R. is booked, Dr. Shepherd is paged. Everyone is moving at once, chaos all around me, but all I can see is her. Her eyelids flutter open, as if she senses me. For a second we're connected, just her and I - her eyes on mine. Her lips curve upward.

The elevator doors close behind them, the emergency room stuttering into silence.

"Callie," Mark whispers, reaching for me. He pauses with his fingers mere inches from my skin, still so unsure of what to do.

Teddy appears, dark blood marking a trail down the side of her face. I swallow a sudden onslaught of tears. "I'm so sorry," she chokes out, "I'm so sorry, Callie. The car just came out of nowhere."

I pull her into my arms, squeezing tightly. She sobs against me, body shaking. There's blood on my cheek when I let her go. "You need to get checked out," I tell her fiercely, "Have someone look at your head."

"I'm so sorry," she says again, her sobs even harder, her breathing heavier.

I look to Mark, forcing her into his care. "It's okay, Teddy," I swear, "You're going to be okay."

I run for the stairwell, barreling down the steps to the surgical floor. I forget the mask, I forget to scrub, all I can think of is her. I have to say my final words. I have to tell her that I love her.

Arizona's still conscious when I reach the table, the anesthesiologist's hands poised and ready to sedate her. I surge forward, pressing my lips against hers. She's smiling when I open my eyes, a single tear dribbling down her cheek. "I love you," I whisper, "I will always love you."

Her eyes close and that's it. It's over.

The sobs rip through me abruptly, my knees giving out. I drop to the floor, gasping for a breath I just can't find. Grasping for a life I'll never get back.

A nurse urges me to my feet, guiding me out of the operating room. But I don't have to know the rest. I don't have to see this to the end. It is done; I did exactly what she wanted.

#

"Welcome back, Dr. Torres," comes the gruff voice. Thick tenor. He pushes a needle into the curve of my arm. "That's the antidepressant," he says.

I cough. He presses a straw to my lips, murmuring softly that I should drink.

"How'd it go?" he asks once my eyes have opened and consciousness has seeped back beneath my skin. "Did you do all you needed to do?"

I nod, reaching for his hands. I grasp them between my own, squeezing. "Thank you," I whisper. "Thank you for helping me make my extraordinary."

He chuckles. "You already did, Callie, long before you met me. The machine has done nothing more than let you relive those memories."

I shake my head, sitting up so I can look him straight in the eye. "This machine is capable of so much more than you realize," I swear.

He laughs again, rolling backwards with his chair. His hands slip from mine. "It is just a memory machine, Callie. It does nothing more remarkable than what we allow it to see within us."

But there is a knowing in his eyes, a smirk upon his lips.

"It's time to go back to living, Callie."

#

The road home is long, certain. My thoughts drift, swirling through images of her face. The taste of her skin. The smell of her coconut shampoo. The curve of her mouth, the dimples in her cheeks, the freckle on her breast.

I make it up to the fifth floor without a single tear shed, relieved to be filled with the light of her, as opposed to the darkness of what was before. Before I kissed her again. Before I told her that I loved her. Before she held my hand and said goodbye.

Before we let go of forever.


	19. Amor animi arbitrio sumitur, non ponitur

**Amor animi arbitrio sumitur, non ponitur**

_We choose to love, we do not choose to cease loving_

Banging. I stutter to consciousness, bleary-eyed and exhausted. It's been a long, long week and my _God_ he doesn't let up.

"Callie!" he yells again, knocks still not ceasing.

I throw open the door, running a hand down my face. "Jeez, Mark," I mutter, shoving my pager into the pocket of my leather jacket. He grabs my arm, tugging me alongside him.

"This isn't something you want to miss, Cal."

We stop in the hospital lobby, craning our necks to get a proper view of what's happening on the boardwalk above. Teddy, buzzing from surgery, appears at one end, scrub cap still on and gown billowing in the breeze. My gaze drifts to the other side, where he walks toward her - slow, purposeful steps. She lights up, dazzling smile ripping across her features.

He kneels before she can reach him and yammer on about the surgery she just rocked. And it's him, down on one knee in front of her, that finally casts her into stunning silence.

I watch his mouth move, the words barely above a whisper. Just for her to hear; for her alone. "Yes," she sobs, laughter bubbling out of her loudly and echoing in the open space. He slides a ring onto her finger, kisses her lips, buries his hands in her hair.

A cheer erupts around me, a group of nurses and doctors and a few residents. April Kepner hugs another fellow, both of them giggling with delight. Happiness.

Everything as it's meant to be.

I feel a single tear roll down my cheek; a smile split my features. This is what she wanted - all of this. Teddy, with her happily ever after and a man who loves her, a chance at a future Arizona and I never would've had. This is the fate Teddy deserved.

She was right, when she said you can't meddle with destiny without consequences. Little actions make ripples - ripples that rock the existence of those around us. Like boats on water, we are all floating out at sea. All it takes is one change, one wave, for someone to capsize. But it's never you, left drowning in your own wake; it's always those brave enough to float alongside you.

"Drinks at Joe's!" he yells from above, holding Teddy's hand high in victory. "On me!"

Another cheer. More laughter.

"You in, Cal?" Mark asks.

I shake my head. "I think I'm just gonna head home. She'll understand."

"Oh, come on, Callie," Mark frowns. "Come celebrate."

"No, really," I say, already backing away. "I'm tired, I'll catch Teddy tomorrow and buy her lunch or something. Tell her I'm really, really happy for them."

He doesn't argue when I walk out the hospital doors.

Even outside, the energy carries; young interns whooping as they make their way across the parking lot. Joe's will be overrun tonight - every person who can get away crowding into the place to toast the happy couple. But I'll see her tomorrow. I'll give my congratulations in the morning light, with a hug and a promise to help her plan the wedding.

Tonight, though; tonight I just need a moment for myself.

I climb the stairs to my apartment two at a time. Shove my key into the lock and then click it shut behind me. Drop my purse beside the island. I dig a lighter out of the junk drawer, shaking it slightly to make sure there's still fluid inside. Tonight, I need it.

Tonight, I need Arizona.

I light candles as I go - burning a healthy glow through the apartment. I've arranged them on end tables, in glass jars, across the bathroom counter. The bathroom dances in candlelight as I turn the water on, filling up the tub.

It takes a few minutes, but finally the smell fills the air: coconut candles. I lower myself into the bathwater, breathing a sigh of relief. I close my eyes and it's like my face is buried in my hair. Like she's all around me, still. Outside it begins to rain again in earnest, another September storm passing through. I wonder, however briefly, if it's raining where she is.

Three months since my return, and I still find myself clinging to the vestiges of her. The coconut candles on every free surface, the hazelnut coffee on the top shelf of the cupboard, the box of articles in the guest room closet. But it's less painful, now, to keep her all around me. Less painful to watch life keep moving.

I know now that I can do nothing less than keep up.

It's easier, somehow, to understand that we were never meant to have forever. However unfair, we had the time we had, every beautiful moment. That first kiss in the bar bathroom. Dancing in our apartment long before it was ever _our_ apartment. Our wedding.

We were never meant to grow old together - it wasn't in the cards for us. But we got a second chance to say goodbye and, on nights like this one, that alone is enough to remind me that tomorrow is another day - not another step away from her. She is all around me, always.

You never lose the love of your life.

Even Denia had said it, the night she called to tell me Dr. Lewis had passed away. She'd uttered it then, that he carried on. That she carried him within her, that he would remain as long as she remembered him. The people we love don't die; they only stop living. They don't stop existing unless they are forgotten.

And moving on doesn't mean I'll forget Arizona. Taking the days, one by one, and surviving them doesn't mean that she's less a part of me. She doesn't die because I choose to live; she lives on with me. She's there, with every breath, every sunrise. Every time I throw open the curtains, or eat donuts for breakfast, I know she's with me.

I open my eyes, glancing around the room. A single candle has blown out, smoke billowing from the wick. I can't help but smile; no matter where I am, I feel it.

Her love.


	20. Ad infinitum

**Ad infinitum**

_To infinity without end_

She'd been beautiful in the first breath; cascading brown curls and eyes so green they stopped his heart. And he'd told her as much, in that crowded bar, when he finally remembered how to open his mouth. Because his experiment hadn't warranted such a discovery - the night out had been meant solely to understand his peers better, to grasp the twenty-something college bar scene they were all drawn to. A simple cataloguing of the human experience, truthfully; something he never intended to repeat.

But she had been there, wearing a black dress with a glass of wine in her hand and as soon as she threw her head back with laughter he was enraptured by her. In love with her. It was completely unquantifiable, something he would've argued wholeheartedly just mere minutes before.

Before he'd seen her.

It was she, who taught him that love at first sight existed. It was she, who changed his belief in fate. Because what was science when there was Rose?

#

He found he loved her more with each passing day, yet another fact he couldn't reason. There was the afternoon she discovered composting available in New York City and dug all of the remnants of food out of their garbage can and even when she smelled of onion skin and orange peels, she was passionate and radiant. Or the night when the full moon shone completely through their bedroom window and instead of shutting the curtains she'd ripped them off the wall and shoved the bed into the middle of the glow and curled into his side; her eyes had fluttered shut and she'd drifted off to sleep like some midnight angel and he'd loved her even more then.

Or the evening she'd come running in from work and disappeared into the bathroom and come out glowing brighter than the sun and he'd been able to do nothing more than tuck her into his arms and kiss her. Taste her lips and bite her tongue and swear to her that he'd never loved her as much as he did right then. That love at first sight was nothing compared to love at five-hundredth.

Except she'd whispered other words into his mouth. Words that tipped his very knowledge of their life on its side, emotional whiplash tearing him from her grasp.

"I'm pregnant."

But he was too young, they were unprepared, it was all too soon. He still had years left in his education, her job was barely enough to pay for the measly apartment they shared. A child was out of the question, at least for now. Until he could support her, support them.

"What are we going to do?" he'd whispered, still so taken aback. Still so unready for such a conversation, such a development.

And that was her emotional whiplash, tossing her backwards. Wiping the smile from her face and knitting her brows and jutting her chin out. "Excuse me?" Because she was the dreamer and she had dreamt this story a thousand times - her belly swollen with his child, his goodnight kiss against her lips, the gold band adorning her finger. She'd dreamt them a life together, a future. While the timing wasn't the best, it was their first step.

"Well, we can't keep it," he'd muttered, science still greatly outweighing emotion in his mind. Though he'd tasted the powers of love, he'd yet to understand it fully. The ever rational; her opposite.

And where he stood to fight, she turned and ran. Out the apartment door; banging on the elevator button three times before taking off down the stairs; through the lobby and into the street.

He heard the screech of tires from the stairwell at the third floor, trying desperately to catch up with her. A crowd had mingled when he reached the road, sirens already echoing from far away. It was she, who taught him that love could hurt. It was she, who changed his belief in the good of the world.

It was the paramedics who pronounced her dead at the scene.

#

He'd been a different man in the first layer; naive, twenty-four. Unready for the heavy burden of falling in love. And he'd carried that with him for many years. It was the first Randolph Lewis who never married, who never kissed another woman (though he longed to), who dedicated his life to a single ideal. He moved to Seattle, joined a medical practice.

But it was this Dr. Lewis who became the dreamer; who picked up pieces of his lost lover and sewed them into his skin. He drew sketches of a machine in the margins of his notes, dreamt up concoctions that could alter the very fabric of the mind - drag pieces of memory from the darkest recesses. He dreamed of making it real.

And then he did.

It was this Lewis who lost himself in his grief and gave of himself for his science. For his dream. For his Rose. And it was this Lewis who did it all over and instead of saying what he'd said before, when she told him she was pregnant, he'd simply kissed her harder.

#

Senna, he'd named her. Senna Grace on a September morning and he'd learned again of love at first sight. With her mother's green eyes and her father's dark hair and a set of lungs that could rival every child in the hospital ward.

He had loved her with her screaming cries, her midnight wails, her daylight babbles. He'd loved her first word ("Cat!") and her first steps and the first time she called him Daddy. He'd loved her from the apartment in New York City to a house they bought in Seattle and he'd loved her even more when she begged them for a sister.

He planted a garden for their family: his bright red Rose, his yellow Senna (multiglandulosa) flowers, and on a night in late June - Gardenia Joy.

Only, in the breaths where his life finally felt complete, he watched something alter. Something he couldn't make sense of with equations nor rational thought, because it was a shift in her eyes. He couldn't explain it even to himself, but it was there.

And then she wasn't and there was still no explanation. No Senna Grace in her booster seat at the kitchen table, no Gardenia babbling noisily from her playpen in the living room, no Rose in their bedroom leaving a trail of her perfume in the air. As abruptly as the first time, he was alone.

It was _this_ Lewis who buried himself back in the machine. Perfected the pieces, redesigned his concoctions, let them speak of him on the news in the hope that she would hear his name and come back to him. Just like he came back to her, time and time again - to the moonlight in their New York bedroom, to the first evening in their home in Seattle, to the first time he saw her and the last time he kissed her and each of their daughters' births.

But he couldn't make a change. He couldn't risk their lives. Couldn't risk Senna's giggle or little Denia's hands. Could never risk extinguishing the light in Rose's eyes.

It was this Dr. Lewis who began vomiting, who lost his appetite. Who found his days run rampant with nausea and exhaustion. It was he who was diagnosed with cancer.

And he regretted it all, every second he'd tried to get back, when she'd shown up at his door. Dark hair and green eyes and begging for a job. Because she believed in the machine, she believed in his idea, that people could return and relive what they'd lost.

It was Denia who sat next to the chair in his final months, who tucked blankets tighter around him and offered him sips of water when he coughed too hard. It was Denia Hamilton who'd dreamed her whole life of a father she'd never known, stories of whom her mother had taken to her grave, whose name could not be remembered by her older sister. It was she who found herself sitting next to him as the cancer slowly killed him.

It was this Dr. Lewis who never told her.

#

It was Callie who accessed the third layer, who fixed the pieces he'd been too afraid to change. Who took the pain of the car accident he'd dreamed into oblivion and sat in his chair and saved her lover and somehow saved his, too.

It was the third layer that found a bolder Dr. Lewis, a man who searched for the woman he loved before it was too late. Before life and age and the taste of death could pull her from his fingers again. And he kissed his wife and hugged his daughters and they were all different women than he remembered.

It was Senna, seventeen and bleach blonde hair who clung to rational thoughts. Denia who was swayed by emotion, who'd longed for a father and then flourished in her mother's arms. Each a half of the two of them. And then Senna had graduated and applied to medical school and that alone had made him prouder than her first word or her first steps - more than he even knew possible and everything had made sense again. Everything had felt complete.

It was his dear, sweet Denia who followed her mother into the flower shop she'd started in Lynnwood and who was standing beside her when a heart attack stole her from him once again.

The dreams began in the wake of her funeral, pieces of a life he didn't understand racing at him in the darkness of his bedroom. Because he was a different Dr. Lewis once again, but he hadn't come from the layers of before - he had merely existed here and so had his machine and when a life that hurt him filled his head, he had to write it down. He had to write it all.

By the time the cancer took control, he knew the missing pieces. He knew the extraordinary things he'd done. When he slipped into a coma, his daughters knew them, too.

#

He closes his book, a deep breath filling his chest. He lets it out slowly, enjoying the sensation. He still remembers how it feels not to be able to do that, to struggle just to stand. He takes pride in his health, now; he knows the grim fate of the other side. The other layers.

But here he is healthy. Childless and alone, but healthy just the same. He counts his victories where he finds them, however miniscule they may seem. Because he's sixty-three this month and he's nowhere near the naive twenty-four year old on that New York street.

He has lived his share of lifetimes, three times over. Once with Rose. Once with his daughters. And one just like this, sitting in his chair, reading books, working long hours at the practice even as he transitions into retirement. He has lived every layer of possibility and two of them have killed him. He can be thankful for his health, when he is sitting in this one.

The streets of Seattle stretch below his window, the threat of rain looming in the clouds but putting barely a damper on the people strolling down the sidewalk. He spots them instantly, hands clasped, one tanned finger pointing at something in a shop window. He smiles when she does, her face twisting to look at the woman beside her.

A left hand combs through blonde curls, wedding ring firmly in place. Exactly where a young Dr. Torres had placed it years ago as they said I do. Arizona presses a kiss to her wife's lips, uncaring of the crowd around them, the prying eyes. Another hand settles on a swollen stomach, stilling the flutter of a child growing within.

They are happy, he thinks. In love. Another victory worthy of recognition.

Because they've never known of the machine. There's been no talk of things lost, no drunk driver on a rain slicked street. They have not been ripped apart here, they have simply lived.

For that, Dr. Lewis is grateful. That is his extraordinary.


	21. Author's Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was the final author's note I shared as a separate chapter at the end of Extraordinary Measures.   
> Compiled are all the people I thanked, as well as a list of songs I'd used for inspiration while writing the story.

Wow. This journey has been nothing short of amazing. So much has changed since that night, almost two years ago, when a Twitter Q&A with Jessica Capshaw spawned the beginning of a story. I spent a week after that, asking everyone who would listen the same question: "If you could go back and save the love of your life, would you?" And it was my best friend, Alyssa, who finally gave me the answer I so desperately needed. She said it would be selfish, to challenge fate for your own personal gain.

This story has existed in various different forms, rewritten profusely. It was a request for proof reading that got me one of the greatest online friends I've ever had, Kaitlyn, who held my hand through the beginnings of this final rewrite. This story, as it stands today, took shape over Skype, with her challenging me and suggesting new twists and guiding me from the emotional, but plot-flat, piece I began with. She was there for me through the roughest parts of that first year, and it was this story that she used as a reminder to keep me going. On my worst nights, she made me promise to hang on until I finished Extraordinary Measures. Kaitlyn, that was the greatest challenge you ever gave me. You pushed me to be more than what I was, and I sit here two years later as a completely different person. You helped me to find purpose, and for that I am forever grateful. I love you, Kaitlyn.

I want to take this time to thank Anna, too, who has also been along for the ride for more than a year. She's the one who has proofread every single chapter, fixed my shitty grammar wherever she could (I'm sorry for using big words that I don't always understand), and posted chapters for me when I couldn't. She has been my voice of reason for the last few chapters of this story - doing everything from sitting on Skype and staring at me until I write something, to actually writing skeleton pieces for me when I couldn't get certain things right as a whole. We won't even mention the ridiculously sweet things she's done outside of this story (like express mailing me pumpkin cookies for my birthday - twice over!). Anna, you are my best friend. Thank you for the long talks and the stupid texts and the amazing letters and gifts and everything else you've bestowed on me. I can't even begin to say how thankful I am to have an amazing person like you in my life. I love you, Anna.

There are so many other people who have been integral to Extraordinary Measures. Tahnee, who read one of the very first drafts and pushed me to continue. Catherine, who's made me laugh at 3am when I just couldn't think any longer. Alyssa, who's read my writing since we were in high school and still finds time to encourage me, despite our crazy hectic lives. My mom, who will eventually be allowed to read this, who has not-so-gently reminded me (many times) that sex is a part of the life experience and to ditch my prude ways for the sake of the storytelling - I'm still working on that, Mom, but I promise I'll get there. To three girls I loved in different ways while writing this: Jessii, mia tesoro, and Nikki, I don't know that any of you will ever read this, but you each taught me something different about love and relationships and being true to myself and for that I am grateful.

Finally, I want to thank Alejandra. I've tried, more times than I'd like to admit, to put into words how grateful I am for you. I've watched you from afar for years, but it was this story that gave me the courage to talk to you. It kick-started our friendship, and now I don't know what I'd do without you. I have no idea what lies ahead for us, what our lives will look like in a year, but I don't want to imagine a single day without you. I think I've spent my whole life looking for you. Thank you, for all you've done along this journey - the artwork that inspired me to keep going, that long and beautiful review that will forever be saved in my Tumblr inbox, for being my friend through everything. You've never judged me and I think that is the greatest gift of all. Te amaré para siempre, mi amor.

A year ago, there was also an elaborate soundtrack for this story. Though many of the pieces are no longer relevant, its importance still carries weight. If you wish you listen to any of the songs that were used for inspiration, they are listed below:

1\. Youth by Daughter

2\. Stay by Hurts

3\. Poison and Wine by The Civil Wars

4\. How to Save a Life (Live iTunes Pass) by The Fray

5\. Tremble (Studio Rehearsal) by Charlotte Martin

6\. Fix You (Orchestral Arrangement) by Coldplay

7\. Your Ghost (Cover) by Greg Laswell

8\. Greatest Prize by Nat and Alex Wolff

9\. If I Die Young (Cover) by Julia Sheer

10\. I Don't Know Anything at All Anymore by Rob Giles

11\. If You Can't Sleep by She & Him

12\. Crazy Ever After by The Rescues

13\. A Wish by Gregory & the Hawk

14\. Our Farewell by Brunuhville

15\. Wish by Sutton Foster

16\. A Thousand Years (Cover) by The Piano Guys

17\. This Old Love by Lior

18\. The Lonely by Christina Perri

19\. Demo (4) by Sara Ramirez

20\. Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift

21\. The Beacon by A Fine Frenzy

22\. These Broken Hands of Mine by Joe Brooks

23\. How to Save a Life (Cover) by an old Tumblr friend, Deborah and her friend, Michelle

I want to thank all of you, the readers, for continuing to read despite that ridiculous "hiatus" (sorry about that) and who've put up with my giant breaks in between chapters and hectic updating schedule and self-indulgent author notes. I have no apologies for who I am, for how I chose to go about this, but thank you for tolerating all of it. Thank you for all of the reviews.

Thank you to one reader, who pep talked me several times, and whose town was chosen for Senna and Gardenia's last name. You know who you are; you have good, Canadian maple syrup running through your veins.

Thank you, to the readers have emailed me in the last week or so, begging me not to truly let this go. This story is finished, in regards to how it stands as fanfiction, but I do agree that I am not done with it. Wherever it goes from here, it was the support of readers on this site that got me to the end. I promise I will do right by it in the future, when I pick it up and tear it to pieces again.

This journey, on this site, was kick started on this day, one year ago. My twentieth birthday was when I began posting this story here on FF and so it's only fitting that it comes to an end on this same day, my twenty-first birthday. Extraordinary Measures has been so much more than a writing experience for me; it has spanned more than a year of my life, it has kick-started friendships, it has taught me things about myself as a person and a writer, and it marks the first novella-length writing project I've ever finished.

I close this tale with a hearty shot of coconut rum. Cheers and thank you for reading along. I hope your journey was Extraordinary, too.


End file.
